A Letter to the Washington Post About Editorial on Department of Education
The Post overlooked a major reason to close the department
Dear Editorial Board Members,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter about your recent editorial in The Washington Post, Why do we need the Education Department? It’s simple.
As a brief introduction, I’m a lifelong reader of the Post who nevertheless has long noticed the paper’s feminism-inspired gender bias, provable by its imbalanced coverage of domestic violence1 and made undeniable by its 2018 publication of the Why can't we hate men? op-ed:
In response to the Post’s gender bias, I’ve set up a Substack site, Letters to The Washington Post, where I post open letters to Post columnists who have written articles that perpetuate this bias.
As a former employee of the U.S. Department of Education, I took particular interest in your editorial. I was hired by HEW’s Office of Education shortly before it became a full-fledged cabinet department and was immensely proud to help administer programs that aided minority and disadvantaged students to gain educational opportunity. (I left the Department in 1982 as a result of Reagan’s effort to close it through reductions-in-force.)
However, over time my pride in the Department has given way to shame as I’ve been disillusioned with much of the direction and “woke” activities2 of the Department, in particular by the issuance in April 2011 of a “Dear Colleague Letter” (DCL) sent to American colleges and universities by the Department’s Office of Civil Rights.
As I’m sure you’re aware, under the presumed authority of Title IX the DCL directed all U.S. colleges and universities, under penalty of losing all federal funding, to institute draconian changes to the way sexual assault accusations were to be managed.
The directive vastly changed and undermined the due process rights of students — 98% male3 — who have been accused of sexual assault at the nation’s colleges and universities. Among other changes, this “guidance”4:
required colleges to use a “preponderance of evidence” standard (> 50% certainty of guilt) instead of “beyond a reasonable doubt” that is the standard for all criminal proceedings
violated the constitutionally-specified prohibition against double jeopardy by allowing both sides — including the accuser — to appeal a sexual misconduct decision, subjecting the accused to a theoretically-unlimited number of additional hearings
eliminated the accused’s right to legal counsel
severely limited cross examination (as being “too stressful” for the accuser)
bypassed rules of evidence, obviating the guarantee that all evidence — even exculpatory evidence — would be shared with both parties; however, hearsay and other irrelevant “evidence” are allowed
didn’t require placing the parties under oath, leaving consequences for lying generally nonexistent
didn’t require schools to record hearings or explain how they came to final decisions.5
There have been hundreds or perhaps thousands of students — almost all males — who have been unfairly treated after being accused of rape or sexual assault under the Kafkaesque guidelines instituted by the Department of Education.6
The result was described in a book, The Campus Rape Frenzy — The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities:
“… the federal government, joined by virtually all colleges and universities, has mounted a systematic attack on bedrock American principles including the presumption of innocence, access to exculpatory evidence, the right to cross-examine one’s accuser, and due process.”
Another book that describes the effect of the Department’s gender biased directive is Twisting Title IX. The book documents the outrageous abuses done in the name of Title IX and “equal educational opportunity”. The problems with the OCR guidance are fully described in the chapter titled “OCR’S Unlawful Assault on Due Process and Fair Procedures”.
In short, the federal government is complicit in undermining male college students’ civil rights.
Although the Post has at least once feebly admitted that the new OCR-mandated Title IX regulations “…in some cases denied due process to those accused of sexual assault”, the paper has mostly been silent about this obvious abuse of men’s civil rights at America’s universities.7
I believe that your editorial significantly erred in not including in its list of “stumbles” and “missteps” the Department’s horribly misguided use of Title IX that compromised the civil rights of male college students across the country.
It’s also a major reason why President Trump wants to close the Department.8
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond
Publisher of "Letters to The Washington Post" Substack
This observation was confirmed by a February 2023 report by The Coalition to End Domestic Violence that described a 10-Year Suppression of the Truth on Domestic Violence by the Washington Post.
These woke activities are described by conservative writer Christopher Rufo on his Substack. Note that although I only occasionally agree with Mr. Rufo, even conservative commentators are sometimes undeniably correct in their observations. This is one of them:
“Last week, I had a front-row seat to this process. I released material from an ongoing investigation into ideological corruption at the Department of Education and its sprawling NGO network. This material painted a damning picture of the department’s reigning ideologies. In one video, a Department of Education-funded NGO argued that public-school educators should destigmatize child “sex work,” especially for “queer and trans people of color” and “LGBTQ+ youth.” In another, activists with a Department of Education-affiliated NGO claimed that babies develop racial biases and begin “attributing negative traits” to nonwhite races by age five. And finally, I published a clip from an NGO that had received an $8 million grant to promote the idea that America is a “racialized structure of power, privilege, [and] oppression.”
Although DOE’s OCR claimed that the Dear Colleague Letter was merely “guidance”, the threat of being denied federal funding was a “… cudgel with which [the OCR] beat colleges and universities into submission to their policy objectives.” — Twisting Title IX, p. 5, Robert L. Shipley
Described in “OCR’s Assault on Due Process and Fair Procedures” section of Twisting Title IX, Robert L. Shipley
According to one organization that is fighting these injustices, Title IX for All, as of this date (Feb 20, 2025), there are 886 lawsuits that it is tracking in its Accused Students Database.
For example, in a 2021 editorial, Biden has a chance to restore balance to the rules on campus sexual assault, the Post, admitted that the new (2011) Title IX sexual assault policies “…caused an overcorrection that, in some cases, denied due process to those accused of sexual assault. Male students who had been found guilty in administrative proceedings of sexual wrongdoing, and who were expelled or given other punishments, mounted successful court challenges. The Trump regulations sought to restore balance by spelling out due process rights, including a presumption of innocence”, but then took the feminist position that Trump era correction went too far, and could possibly “… could discourage victims of assault from coming forward.”
Because my intent is only to challenge the Post’s feminist gender bias, I’ve tried to avoid discussing Trump. I do agree, however, with retired federal judge and January 6th Committee witness J. Michael Luttig: "Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy."