Haven’t seen discussion of a 3 part series in the Atlantic on this issue.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Campus Rape Policy. Summary: colleges are under tremendous pressure - in large part due to Obama Administration policies - to tilt the balance in favor of finding accused assaulters guilty.
The Bad Science Behind Campus Response to Sexual Assault. Summary: a very untested and dubious theory of neurobiology of trauma makes it very difficult for such accusations to be rebutted.
The Question of Race in Campus Sexual-Assault Cases. Summery: accusations of sex assault seem to be disproportionately leveled against minority students, in particular those accused/suspected of assaulting white women.
I myself don’t have any firsthand knowledge of goings-on on college campuses these days. The article’s findings do seem to fit in with what I see as the general atmosphere these days in terms of college circles (and the Obama administration), but I don’t have much more than that in this regard. I also don’t have professional expertise in neurobiology, but I do know and know of people who have had traumatic experiences, and that much is in alignment with the article.
But perhaps others have more commentary.
This is Emily Yoffe’s bread and butter, and has been for some time: tiresome, imprecise rape skepticism. It’s true that there’s a lot of inexpert science out there; she’s right about that with respect to university officials and elsewhere. It’s true that minority students are named as perpetrators at higher rates; also true inside and outside a campus context. It’s true that there’s pressure on universities to be harder on offenders, and that this leads to tension.
It’s also a lot of “coulds” and anecdotes, without any real thesis. “The uncomfortable truth,” it turns out, happens to be a loose collection of a lot of vague platitudes straight out of Men’s Rights handbooks, without naming any real specific ill that needs to be resolved in what specific way.
It’s complicated. Lots of specific cases are handled in ways that lots of people would want to be handled differently, and the people who want them handled differently don’t agree with each other about how. Other than contributing to a sort of vague paranoia about witch hunts, with the obviously unstated but possible implication that the resolution should be to stop aggressively investigating, I’m not sure what Yoffe’s point has ever been, exactly. Other than that this lady is on the right track with her positions on guidance for schools. I’ll go on record as disputing that.