WTW8: Michael Powell's First NYT Piece Also Was Terrible
Michael Powell is the (former) NYT journalist who completely botched the JWST coverage, as previously discussed at length here. But did you know before that he also completely botched some Title IX / Campus Sexual Assault coverage? We've got his asshole origin story here and it's every bit as terrible as you'd expect. This is a two-parter, and I promise you the payoff in later part 2 is worth the slow burn. There is a paragraph in his story that is some of the worst journalism I've ever seen. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
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Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
I'm Thomas Smith and this is co-host for today, Lydia Smith.
Hi.
How's it going?
Pretty good.
Over there in the other part of the house.
Yeah.
Lonely.
So how do we start this?
So this is a fun deep dive debunking that you've gone on because of our current show favorite journalist.
Podcast favorite journalist, Michael Powell.
You know, yeah, in honor of him moving to the Atlantic, which is big news, right?
We can go ahead and reflect on his storied career at the New York Times and his free speech identity politics beat.
Oh, yeah.
Now we can do like a full review.
And it's like, this is it'll be a audio.
No, it'll be like a course.
Yeah, this guy, oh boy.
So in case you didn't hear, I mentioned it somewhere, I don't remember, but yeah, Michael Powell, the guy who wrote the NASA thing and was terrible and just lies about the anti-woke essentially, he has the same shtick and we're going to see it today.
He left the New York Times, not any clue if it's related to anything, but like, Interesting timing.
You know when one of the best films ever made, Space Jam?
Yes.
This is like the anti-woke aliens are drafting a new team and they're stealing from the NBA teams and they're making it at the Atlantic is what's happening.
And it fucking sucks because I used to like the Atlantic.
I think there's still a good journalist or two there, but it's really becoming populated with this exact fucking person.
Also, this used to be the sports beat guy, so I appreciate bringing Space Jam into it too.
So yeah, when we initially started the research on the NASA thing, and essentially when I was tipped off by how bad the coverage is that this Michael Powell guy is a bad actor, naturally the first thing to do is like, okay, let's check out what else he's written.
And going back in the New York Times, we kind of split it up.
And this was when you, I think this is his first article over there, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
This was officially his first article on that beat.
He tweeted about it when it occurred.
June 25th, 2020 was the date that this article came out.
And he took a deep dive into this area of the world.
Yeah.
The heart of the centrist anti-woke agenda is this guy.
And it's really worth taking a look at.
So we knew he was going to move the Atlantic because it wasn't super public or anything.
Not that we knew a secret, but just like, you know, it was a minor thing that he announced on like his Facebook page or some shit.
Yeah.
And you and I were paying attention to that, but there was a delay and he was going to finish something out.
And we both kind of lost track, like, oh, we were kind of waiting to see.
You might have set an alert or something, but we were waiting to see.
Yeah, I was like, I was checking in every now and then, like, when's the next article?
Yeah, when's he's going to write his first fucking Atlantic piece?
And I'm browsing X the other day.
Which I still just have open on my computer.
I fucking hate that we don't have a social media thing to use anymore.
That's a topic for another time.
But it's still there because I like to follow Michael Hobbs and other people like that.
And I see Michael Hobbs retweeting and all I can kind of see is that it's an Atlantic article.
And he's summarizing it and I was like, oh, what are the odds?
What are the odds?
Is it?
Is it?
Oh yeah, it wasn't in the paragraph that he quoted, but I read the paragraph and I was like, this is fucking Michael Palin.
And so I clicked on the link.
I go to the Atlantic and there he is.
There he is.
So I'm sure we'll cover that or maybe not.
We'll cover something he does over there because it is a formula and I'm interested to break it down here.
So I guess let's get into it.
Just a quick content note before we get started.
We will be discussing campus sexual assault and other kind of related issues.
We go into no detail and I don't even think we talk about particular cases per se, but we do talk hypotheticals and scenarios.
So just wanted to give you the content note.
Yeah, OK, so I mentioned this was his first piece on this particular beat that he took over or created, rather, in June 2020.
And it was about the overhaul of sexual misconduct regulations for school campus under Title IX.
It was titled Trump Overhaul of Campus Sex Assault Rules Wins Surprising Support.
Oh.
Yeah, so I wonder who's supporting it.
But before we dig into that, just really briefly kind of level set what is Title IX, where did it come from, and sort of what changes we're talking about in the article itself.
So Title IX was in the 70s to add to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which addressed discrimination in employment, but there was nothing to address discrimination in education.
What is Title VIII's lazy ass doing?
I don't know what Title VIII is.
It doesn't get much press.
No, I never hear Title VIII.
Back in 1964, sex wasn't considered a protected class.
And essentially what happened, a woman named Bernice Sandler, considered the godmother of Title IX, faced a lot of discrimination in her educational journey.
And as she stepped into activism, she stumbled on an amendment to an executive order by Lyndon B. Johnson that added sex to the protected classes from discrimination by federal contractors specifically.
So when she saw that, she just went for it.
She started filing class action lawsuits all over the place, more than 250 that she filed to demonstrate that women were being discriminated against based on sex as protected class.
She started collecting data and material, and with that, she went to Representatives Edith Green and Patsy T. Mink, who were both on the House Committee on Education and Labor.
So with that information, they launched hearings because they said, hey, there's a problem.
We have the data to back this up.
Let's dive into this and figure out what we can do to fix this problem because there is unequal access to education for women.
What do you mean it passed the House?
you know, sort of cultural discrimination as part of it, the unequal access to opportunity.
So those hearings started in 1970.
From there, it passed the House, went to the Senate.
What do you mean it passed the House?
Those are just hearings.
Oh, well, yes.
Sorry.
They put together their act within the House from the hearings.
Oh, so they wrote some legislation?
Yes, yes.
And they actually passed it in the House?
And then it went over to the Senate for consideration and birched by a Senator from Indiana.
Super cool guy, just some really quick fun facts.
Birch Bayh.
Amazing name.
That's not the coolest thing about him.
It's B-A-Y-H, and they actually, like, did a jingle for his campaign so people knew how to pronounce his last name.
Some cool things about him, he authored the 25th Amendment and the 26th Amendment.
Oh.
Yeah.
So the 25th Amendment, basically, if the president is incapacitated, what that, you know, that they can be removed for.
That's a weird one to be like your accomplishment.
Remember when our president was shot in the skull?
- Well, and god damn it.
Anyway. - We needed to do something. - I wrote that other people would take over when that.
It's like, I'm not saying it's a bad accomplishment.
It's just a weird one to brag about.
26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18, so he was responsible for that.
He's the first person since James Madison and the only non-founding father to have written more than one constitutional amendment.
Wow.
Yeah.
Cool trivia.
Awesome.
Hey, trivia alert, trivia heads.
Birch Bayh.
I never would have thought someone named Birch Bayh, this is a senator.
Senator.
Senator, okay.
Forget everything you've just heard, listener.
You just heard the name Senator Birch Bayh in 1967 or whatever.
Yeah.
You're 100% like, okay, well then he's a white supremacist.
He's like segregation now, segregation today.
I know it's not literally him, but You're going to think it's that.
What state was it?
Indiana.
Indiana.
Oh, that's a wild card.
OK.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you would love this guy, Hunt.
Like, he led efforts in the Senate to ratify the ERA.
That was one of his, like, big pushes, was he was really trying to get that done.
I have to admit, when you said the 25th and 26th, I thought that was going to be one of them.
What is that one?
Did that?
No, that isn't.
It didn't pass, right?
It didn't pass.
It wasn't ratified by enough states and time.
Yeah.
And then he also talked about eliminating the Electoral College back in the 70s.
Yeah.
time traveler from our time?
I know.
That would explain how fucking weird his name is.
Well, who are you?
He's looking at a birch tree.
Birch.
And then he sees somebody who's bi, clearly, sitting weirdly.
And then he's like, bi.
He also pulled Ted Kennedy off of the plane during the plane crash 1964 when the legislative aid and pilot, Don, Oh, I don't remember this.
And Ted Kennedy had, like, serious injuries.
He, like, he and his wife were on the plane and he went up and said, like, is there anyone, you know, still alive or whatever in the plane?
I don't think that's his actual quote.
Anyone there!
And Ted Kennedy called out to him and he went and grabbed him and pulled him out of the plane.
Wow.
And then walked to go find someone after they crashed to get help.
Amazing guy.
Those Kennedys.
I don't think you could say like, oh, I feel bad for those Kennedys, but like, Jesus, a lot of weird shit.
Yeah, that poor family.
So, Birchby, super cool.
And it passed the Senate, and as of 1972, we had Title IX, which prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school that receives funding from the federal government.
If a school was found to have violated this, they would lose their federal funding.
And at the time when it was passed, only 42 percent of students in American colleges were female.
I'm surprised it was that high.
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't say what they were pursuing.
I think if you looked at STEM fields versus like teachers colleges, right, there would probably be some differences there.
Yeah, there's a lot of like funneling into certain places.
Nursing.
You wouldn't really call it like equality in any way if like, you know, yeah.
Interesting.
So that's Title IX.
It's interesting that it said just federal funding.
I guess that makes sense.
I thought that was, okay, so whenever they do that, I feel like, oh, that's an executive order and that's limited to that because that's all the president can really control.
But isn't Title IX, did the states like adopt it individually or something?
How did that work?
Because I feel like it's still in effect.
No, so it's tied to like the Civil Rights Act, right?
Like these are all, it's federal legislation that if you are to receive federal funding, you have expectations to maintain your school is free of discrimination or that you have processes in place if discrimination is raised as a concern that you can address it.
Right.
Maybe there's state versions too, because I don't, does every state school receive federal funding just de facto?
And that's why.
No, you can, I mean, you can opt out of federal funding.
There's actually a college, it's like a case study of what happens when you don't get federal funding and you aren't subject to Title IX.
I was specifically talking about state schools.
Oh, state schools.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure everybody wants the federal government's money with state schools.
So I don't know.
Anyway, just a civics question.
I wasn't sure if they later passed something that made that more broad or if states took it on themselves or if it is just that they receive federal funding.
So it's like, yeah, we're going to do that.
Okay.
Yeah, I do know California has additional laws on top of the federal expectations, right?
They have their own protections that are in addition.
Okay, so part of that process of passing it was actually this push to, it's called the Tower Amendment, and it was to try to exempt College athletics from being held to this sex discrimination concern because they didn't want to have to say women athletes in college deserve the same as male athletes.
There cannot have been that many female college athletes, right?
There were not.
That was very, very low.
And that's actually one of the huge gains that you've seen post-Title IX implementation, the number of women that are participating in college athletics.
Because otherwise there was no point.
You know, they were doing high school and then there was no place for them in college to continue that.
So because of that push, that amendment was like really widely publicized.
Everyone thought for a long time this was a sports equity law.
I 100% thought that.
Yeah.
Because it's really, it sucks and it's a little bit sad because most of the context of hearing about Title IX for me in my upbringing was someone complaining about Title IX, like, oh, no, we got to give the girl the title.
And it's like, oh, no, actually, that's a really good idea.
We should totally do exactly that.
Yeah.
It was always complained about.
But I definitely 100% thought it was a sports related law.
Like I was like, Yeah.
But I mean, at its heart, it's anti-discrimination, right?
just all this money going to men's sports.
So they wrote that Title IX.
Good on them. - But I mean, at its heart, it's anti-discrimination, right?
It's a matter of civil rights.
And athletics is one place where you see that discrimination, where women's programs had worse facilities They offered fewer scholarships for women athletes than they did men athletes.
They didn't have access to trainers, to appropriate staff and resources to heal from injuries.
You know, they didn't get those prime times to do their games, right?
So then they're selling fewer tickets and it's a perpetual cycle.
In the 80s and 90s, that's when they started talking about, like, late 80s, 90s.
They started talking about, okay, this isn't just about sports.
There are instances in which there's sex discrimination on some other avenues that are reasonable.
And in the Supreme Court, they issued decisions in several cases making clear that sexual harassment and sexual assault are a form of sex discrimination.
Yeah.
So those are things that the colleges need to be concerned about and filter them through their Title IX office.
So I couldn't move on until I answered my own question.
Yes.
Maybe you're going to get to it, but it does look like once the court started going shitty in the late 80s, and weird that that started happening, you know, what are the odds that once we put a bunch of fucking Federalist Society pieces of shit originalists in there, textualists, that it started going bad?
They started kind of encroaching on it a bit with Picking apart, this is so, it's funny how consistent these justices are.
This is exactly what they're doing now with stuff.
But back then, 1988, it was like, okay, there's a college and it, you know, it only has some funding federally.
And is it cool if they just totally discriminate against women?
The Department of Education, and mind you, now that I think about it, that's Reagan's department, unless this predates that, let's see.
No, yeah, I mean, 1984, 1980.
I'm pretty sure I'm not doing a deep dive on this, but it's the 80s, so I think that's like Ronald Reagan's Department of Education, unless this case took 10 years to get there, which is possible.
I'm not saying it's, it's not impossible, but it might be that, like, the Department of Education, back then, I think not every single level of government was always so polarized, you know?
Yeah.
You could have civil servants just kind of doing their job, maybe, a little bit.
I don't know.
I'm speculating.
But they were like, well, no, naturally, because not only does this college receive some funding, like certain programs do, not only that, a lot of the students, and I didn't think of this, a lot of the students are on federal assistance for, like, loans and stuff.
And back then, that was good and not a ripoff, you know, when they made that change that made it just impossible.
But anyway, back then, and so it was good federal money back then.
And so that was the Department of Education's reasoning, was like, yeah, no, for these reasons, it applies to this.
And the court was like, all right, you only have to be not a bigot on directly like the program that receives the, it's like, fuck you, man, just fuck you.
Pro-rate.
Hold on, which classroom are you in?
You're sexually harassed?
You gotta go to the designated sexual harassment classroom.
That's where it's okay.
That's where Justice Thomas and Scalia, is Scalia there yet?
I forget.
Probably not.
That's where they say it's okay.
And so then what happened, God, do you remember when, no, we don't remember.
We were babies back then.
But there used to be a time when not everything was the worst possible fucking thing.
And somehow, This is what's blowing my mind.
Somehow Congress was like, well, let's fix this.
And again, this is 1988.
I guess Reagan must have signed that.
I fucking didn't expect to be researching this, but they passed.
They were like, well, we don't like that the Supreme Court just was like, hey, we're going to limit your thing that you, Congress, wanted to do.
Yeah.
Talk about separation of powers and all that crap.
So they're like, all right, fuck you, court.
Yeah.
God, I love this is what this is a model for what we need to do now, by the way.
This is actually really good that we're digging into this now.
This is what needs to be done now.
You know what it requires is voting in a fucking Democrat.
Everybody vote.
Yeah.
Voting is the thing that will do this.
Anyway, so what they did was they passed another, and I love this, it's the Civil Rights Restoration Act passed in 1988, which is like, all right, fuckfaces.
I hope they put that in the like, whereas fuckfaces.
And then they're like, hey, didn't like it?
Okay, guess what?
More Title IX for you.
And it goes to all programs of any educational institution that receives any federal assistance, both direct and indirect.
So that totally answers that question because you're not, there's no way you're going to have You know, unless it's like a school really hell bent on being able to sexually harass people or whatever to be unfair, which I'm sure there are a few Hillsdales or whatever the fuck.
But yeah, the odds that you're going to have nary a student or program or anything that doesn't receive federal funding, either direct or indirect.
I think that that answers my question as to why this is just ubiquitous.
Like I never even heard anyone, you know, tear that apart.
Like in my lifetime, it's never been like, oh, does that apply to this?
No, it's just like, Title IX.
I actually assumed it was like just the whole country, this applies to them.
But that's actually an interesting legal point.
Sorry, I just had to know that.
No, no, I love that.
After 88, though, it was pretty slow in terms of what was happening with Title IX.
There was guidance issued in 2001 and then nothing again that I saw until the Dear Colleague letter in 2011 in the Obama administration.
And this is what... Sorry, what's this?
This is, it's called a Dear Colleague Letter.
So essentially it's not official regulations.
It's intended to provide clarity under Title IX, additional guidance, but not rulemaking and not an executive order.
Nothing like that.
No, no.
Like an equivalent in like state government would be like departmental letters, right?
They're issued to provide guidance to folks that need it.
So this really sparked everything else that came after.
It sparked the reaction from the individuals that Michael Powell interviews in the article, a lot of pushback.
Oh, are these the feminists that are weirdly supportive of Trump's policies here?
Oh, they sure are.
Yeah, and so I thought we could talk a little bit about what those changes were.
So in the Dear Colleague letter, the Obama administration did a few things.
They, first of all, ensured that it was centered on the person making the complaint, right?
They really wanted to elevate voices of those that were victims in the situation, the complainants.
It discouraged universities from giving the accused the right to question their accusers.
And it also discouraged disclosing identities of witnesses.
And it defined sexual harassment specifically as any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.
This is an area where there's been a lot of back and forth, and we'll see why in a minute.
And then, interestingly, it lowered the bar from clear and convincing to preponderance of the evidence.
So it was a lower standard, a lower burden, right, that you had to show in order to Find the individual likely violated the conduct expected at the school under this.
And I know we're going to get into it, but I do.
I mean, these are these are tough questions in some ways.
I wouldn't be in favor, obviously, of like, OK, murder trial.
It's 50 percent plus one.
Yeah, of course.
No, I mean, you know, we need to make sure the state meets their burden because the state loves to execute innocent black men.
But it just, it kind of depends.
This isn't like the law.
They're not going to jail.
Right.
I mean, this is correct.
It's a, it's an important thing, you know, like obviously you wouldn't want any system to find an innocent person guilty, but like when you're dealing with things like this, you face tough questions, you face trade-offs.
And I think just off the top of my head here, these issues are often very difficult to prove.
They're often, he said, she said.
and specifically that gender.
Like they're often that, not always.
And those are the kinds of things where I'm sure there are a bunch of cases.
I'm sure what motivated this is there are a bunch of cases where like, holy shit, we know that this fucking guy did something bad, but like he did it in a cunning enough way or got lucky enough that like, okay, yeah, you've got some people saying, yes, he did it.
Yeah, she told me he did it.
But is that a preponderance or is that a blah, blah, blah?
You know, and it's, I imagine it's because of that.
Yeah, and I mean, we'll definitely get more into this too, but just for everyone's awareness, Title IX proceedings are disciplinary hearings.
It's administrative, right?
It's demonstrating whether or not the student has done something that's against the school's code of conduct.
If it's done something that's against a safe school environment, they're not going to jail.
They're not going to get charged with crimes.
It might mean that they're suspended.
It might mean that they're expelled.
It might mean that they are moved to a different dorm.
I was going to say, I have heard some of this and I've read broadly some of this, but just identifying the patterns that I know that our listeners, if they've listened thus far to all the episodes, you can already see the pattern so many times.
What it's going to be is a bunch of Michael Powells or whatever, a bunch of fake feminists that aren't really feminists saying, No, this person gets expelled and they never can get a job again because of 50% plus a little bit.
And it's that's unfair.
And what will really happen is, again, it's a big country.
There's a lot of colleges.
Maybe you could find a worst case scenario.
Sure.
Edge cases.
There are always going to be fucking edge cases on everything.
There's not going to be a system you come up with that won't have some tough cases.
That's just being human.
That's what it is.
And you do your best and you hope that people show good discretion and stuff in adjudicating those.
But what I bet you'll see is a whole lot of times where the punishment was, like you said, moving dorm or nothing.
Or like often, I know there are these cases because I've seen that women have had to like sue for this where the punishment was like the woman has to leave something, you know, like they put the whole burden on like the girl to avoid the guy, you know, there's going to be all kinds of that bullshit.
But the consistent anti-woke way to argue, which is always bad faith is, Take the harshest possible punishment that could ever be and the minimum fucking standard on the hardest case and just assert that that's every case.
It's every day.
That's happening every day.
And ignore all the rest of it.
Like all the good outcomes that might happen because of these changes, which there will be a lot.
Yeah, so let's see.
So those were the Obama-era guidelines, not even rules, guidelines.
And then 2016, we elected a crazy person.
What happened then?
I don't remember.
Is that COVID?
Yeah, God, if only.
Betsy DeVos came in to the Secretary of Education role.
And they had a big problem with the Obama approach to Title IX, and they actually decided to go the formal regulatory route rather than issuing these sort of guidelines and, you know, more informal letters meant to provide clarity.
And so theirs was a long process.
Very, very long.
They had the official notice and comment period.
The final report ended up being something like 2,300 pages that they put together that I started to go through and I was like, oh my God, this is too much.
You don't get paid enough for that.
So, I think here we can kind of dive into the article and we'll get more into what the DeVos standards were, but Michael Powell sets up some of it for us.
So, I read the article, but I have not done the debunk because we're doing the format of I'll be the dummy pretending to, you know, I'll be the fucking New York Times subscriber, like well-off liberal who like thought Joe Biden was like radical, like pretty far left and was like, yeah, this is great.
I'm voting Joe Biden and he's so left.
It's really progressive.
This is, and I think that person is particularly who I'm worried about with people like Michael Powell and this, sorry, I won't go off on a huge thing, but like these exact fucking journalists wield so much, like they have such a big outsized voice in our media and our newspapers and our web publication, all that crap.
And I don't, it's infuriating to me because they do not deserve it, but they control so many of these outlets in different ways, and they do such shoddy crap journalism.
So let's see how good this article is, not to color your perceptions, but I think we know that he sucks, so I don't think I'm surprising anybody.
Yeah, I first want to say in an interview related to this piece, Michael Powell, his quote was, there's an argument to be made for the DeVos standards, and that's what drove me to those three female law professors.
There's an argument to be made.
Let's go pursue it.
Let's go see what, let's cover it.
How could you say no?
How could you not want to cover that argument?
That's a good, that's deserving of the, all the news fit to print moniker that goes on the New York Times.
And no, that's just wrong.
Like, it's just like saying what, you know, hey, there's an argument for the Charlottesville guys.
Let's go find that argument for why they were marching with those tiki torches.
There's an argument that exists.
So we need to go do journalism on the biggest paper, the most important fucking paper in the world.
That's just wrong.
Like that's just not, it's not proportionate.
It's stupid.
It's finding conflict out of nothing.
Yeah.
And I could almost have told you what this article was without reading it, at least for part of it.
You know, I don't like facts.
I'm just kidding.
I'm home.
Seriously, I'll just do the Thomas version.
Let me know if I get anything wrong.
It's like, it's, hey, you know this thing that Trump or Trump's people are doing that's obviously bad and it sucks?
Look at how mad these liberals are at it.
They, and then you'll quote some like the fucking thing that you get to say is, well, I'm just, I'm just quoting that side and set it up as like, they're hysterical, but actually Those people are fucking idiots because here are feminists.
Feminists.
It's in the name.
So they must be fucking Betty Friedan.
No, that's probably not a good example.
I need to pick somebody current.
You know, you never know when those older feminists like reach their limit and they're like, no, fuck you.
I mean, that's a big through line here.
Side note.
Yeah.
Oh, crap.
Yeah.
So anyway, it's like these feminists, they think this might be a good idea.
And it'll be somebody who's if not right wing, they'll be that annoying centrist who just spends all their time critiquing the left, but pretending they're on the left.
You know, they'll be like a Dave Rubin type.
But really, they're just if you do deeper research, I'm sure you'll find that they're just incredibly shitty and trick or not really trick because I think Michael Powell's in on it.
They'll be the perfect quote for him because they look like they're leftist because you associate feminists with left, with progressive, blah, blah, blah, but they won't actually be.
They'll be fucking what's-her-name.
Who's the factual feminist?
Did she come up in this?
Christina Hoff Sommers.
Oh, wow.
Nice job, huh?
Yeah, I had to watch videos of her.
Oh, God!
I didn't know you got into it.
So yeah, it won't be that.
It'll be Christina Hoff Summers.
And what's missing in this fucking analysis in this article is, boy, you sure made a big deal about how like, oh, these Democrat idiots are like arguing against feminists and they're so dumb.
Did you cite or reference or quote or give any context as to the other side of this?
Yeah.
Like the pro-fucking-rapist side that's like you just go anywhere on Twitter And you'll find that he always references the mean tweets of the left, but it's never like, and also this guy thinks women shouldn't even be allowed to go to school.
And that's like, that guy's like in Trump's cabinet.
Yeah.
Nope.
Doesn't cover that.
Never covers that.
So yeah.
How'd I do?
Is it?
Pretty good.
I mean, he, you know, he doesn't hide some of this.
I mean, obviously not in the article, but also his approach.
He has said in interviews that he specifically is drawn by the contrarian, right?
He loves the stories of where, like, someone doesn't share the same beliefs of a group that they share an identity with.
That is so telling.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
And he's very upfront about that, which I found really shocking in some ways, that he can be that blatant.
Yeah, I bet he thinks it's, like, this brilliant thing, like, oh, it's such a— because it's just a fucking— A noble cause.
Intellectual, you know, jerk-off motion for him.
But also, Han, does he find a lot of, like, country bumpkins who are like, actually, I think women should be allowed to go to school and not be harassed?
No.
Absolutely not.
Weird.
He doesn't find that.
It's all people who you think are left who are actually saying things that are just right-wing, basically.
Yep.
Weird.
Yep.
I would love that character though.
Darn it, I think affirmative consent is that it's like the guy who did the honest work meme or whatever like it's honest work with find that guy and he's like he might have even voted for Trump you got to find or something or everybody around and vote for Trump and he's like giving you like fourth wave feminism theory you know about like That would be cool!
If you want to do that, Michael Powell, do that!
I have a long con idea for us.
You can start writing articles, Michael Schmowell.
Yeah, in verse.
And then, yeah.
Good universe Michael Powell.
Michael Mowell.
And then we'll do that stance.
We'll go track down folks like that.
That's interesting that he was that open about that in the interview.
I actually hadn't come across that when I was doing the NASA stuff.
Yeah.
So, fascinating.
Yeah.
So he starts off the article basically setting up the DeVos standards are here and the liberals are mad about it.
The unions representing teachers and college professors are P.O.'d.
National Organization for Women is upset.
The Trump rules, they said, constitute a radical rollback of protections for victims who seek justice after sexual assaults.
And then he says, there is a surprising audience that offers praise for these standards.
An influential group of feminist legal scholars applauded the administration for repairing what they viewed as unconscionable breaches in the rights of the accused.
So really centering what they want here.
So I want to talk a little bit about what those changes are, a tiny bit.
So yes, more protections for the accused.
They did roll back protection on basis of gender identity.
I saw something about sexual orientation, but I don't know if that got hashed out in the notice and comment period.
They said that the complaint must go to the Title IX coordinator.
It can't go through, like, a teacher or a coach to then act upon.
The student had to reach out to the Title IX coordinator.
What?
Why?
What?
Why?
I don't know why.
Yeah.
More hoops?
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's, there's no, look, obviously this is going to be a bunch of, DeVos was as blatantly evil, like she, and she wasn't hiding it.
Like she, you know, and so I don't even know if they had a reason for that.
The game is make this as hard as possible for sexual harassment victims or sexual assault victims in college.
Just make it as hard as possible because fuck you.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in that 2000 page document where they explained all their reasons for doing everything and ignoring some rules and going with others.
Cause like, well, just think about that change, like to humanize this a bit.
Something happens to you at your university.
Who are you going to talk to?
You're going to talk to like probably the closest professor you might have.
Somebody you feel comfortable with.
Yeah.
Not, oh, that title nine coordinator that you've never met.
Yeah.
Yeah, it also said that harassment off campus and online doesn't count.
Oh, God, I saw this and that is so fucking stupid.
Yeah.
I think originally they were saying all harassment off campus and then later clarified to say if if it's an affiliated student organization like a frat house or something, then that would count, even though it's technically off campus.
It is college sanctioned living situation.
It redefined sexual harassment, saying that it needed to be severe enough.
Severe enough.
That's the wording?
And who knows what that means.
Yeah, this is actually interesting.
One of these feminist legal scholars that really likes the DeVos standards was open and said that she and a couple other colleagues pushed back on that because they were concerned about that language and it wasn't adjusted based on their feedback.
But she still likes the standards.
Oh, okay.
I was going to say, that'll be, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a leopards ate my face, says the person who voted leopards, whatever.
If somebody, you know, got, was a useful idiot and was like, yeah, no, some of these, oh no, but you still should make it bad if someone like sexually harasses, no, you're not going to make it bad if someone sexually harasses someone.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
They also said that you couldn't do no-contact accommodations, so basically moving the accused out of the situation to try and prevent contact with the accuser.
What the fuck?
Because it's unfair for the accused.
And it didn't prescribe any sort of timeline to conduct the investigation.
So critics of this have said it basically said schools can drag their feet.
It's less costly for them to not push through an investigation in a prompt manner.
They just don't expend resources on it.
They don't hire enough staff to cover all the cases.
It's just, let's make it harder in every way for victims to get any sort of justice or even, not even, forget justice, just any sort of, you know, fucking anything.
Accommodations of any kind, not have to be around the perpetrator.
I mean, it's just, it's terrible.
And then it bumped the standard of proof back up.
So let's get back to the article.
So those all suck.
Yeah, they all suck.
We're done here.
But did you know some feminists called Ayn Rand and Ava Braun Who are they going to be?
You know, like feminists love this one weird trick to make it easy to sexually harass somebody.
Yeah.
I mean, and so one of the feminists kind of kicks off this article.
And like, I'm sorry, we didn't go into this enough.
Sure.
The fucking not on campus.
So if let's say you live, you're a student, you live off campus and you're a woman, let's say, and as you're walking home, you live nearby off campus, which, you know, I went to college.
A bunch of us were that.
Yeah.
And you're walking home, and a dude follows you from campus to no longer on fucking home base, then it's game on.
And they can't even, what, just do anything about it?
You'd have to go to the police.
But the university can't do anything.
The student has not violated any code of conduct or policies, you know, anti-harassment, nothing.
I get these people are evil, but like, why do you not?
Like, that seems crazy, you know what I mean?
There's gotta be some level of like, okay, but yeah, but that would just mean if they go 10 feet to the left, you can just do whatever.
Surely that's not correct, right?
Nope, doesn't matter.
I guess, you know what, here's how they probably justify it.
They probably think everything ought to be the highest possible criminal standard for all of this.
They probably think that universities, no one should, it's inappropriate, even though the punishment is not the same as the fucking justice system, and therefore it would make sense to reduce your burden Yeah, I think it's interesting, too, because it's a far more sensationalist violation of what's expected of you as a student on campus, as opposed to, like, plagiarism.
So it's something that is Criminal in a variety of contexts, and I think for some people it's really hard to grapple with not pursuing that in a criminal manner.
Yeah.
And so they conflate those situations.
I think that's partly what's going on, and I have some other reasons why I think that.
Okay, so the quote that kind of kicks us off to meeting these female professors is from Professor Janet Hawley, who says, the new system is vastly better and fairer.
The fact that we're getting good things from the Trump administration is confusing, but isn't it better than an unbroken avalanche of bad things?
Sorry, did she start the quote with, I want to thank my husband for allowing me to be interviewed for this?
Yeah, well, and it's interesting, it says, you know, who specializes in gender and sexuality at Harvard Law School.
Something else that this professor has said is like... Harvard Law School is unimpeachable in terms of its fucking ethical output.
Yeah, more on that.
Eternally, the more on that.
Yes, and I have some stuff here too.
She is a professor who believes that it's important to take a break from feminism.
Wait, just like in your daily routine?
Take 15 minutes and just don't feminism for that time.
I think it's of the opinion essentially that it can kind of keep you riled up.
Oh, yeah.
I like that feminism is the thing that creates all this anger and not any, you know, checks, notes, any of the other identity politics, not like woman hating.
That's not, I don't have to take a break from that apparently.
That's fine.
I can do that all day.
But feminism, you can only take so much in your diet, you know, you don't want to overload.
Yeah.
She's also against affirmative consent from a legal perspective.
She thinks that's concerning.
And she's 71 years old, which I think is worth highlighting because that's a common thread with some of these folks.
People who probably were progressive at some point and then were just like, nope.
Yeah.
I'm done.
The march of progress stops here.
I know that's never been true, as Eli likes to say, in the history of humans, where they're like, the people saying, we've gone, the left has gone too far.
They're never right.
They've never once been right.
They're batting the same average as the people who say Jesus is about to come back.
Like, it's been 2,000 years, and they're like, Jesus, any day.
He's coming.
He's coming any day.
It'll be my lifetime.
He's coming.
That same batting average as the people who are like, look, I know people have said this before, but no, the left this time, No, they won't.
You know what'll happen?
Your children and grandchildren won't talk to you anymore.
That's what'll happen.
Yeah, so she's kind of the cornerstone in some ways in this.
Harvard University was putting together their Title IX approach and their policies, and she really didn't like it.
So she ended up mobilizing a lot of professors at the law school to advocate for their own Title IX policy.
They wrote a letter, it was 28 professors, 21 of them were men, 7 of them were women.
We represent the sexual harassers of women.
Yeah.
One of those men was Alan Dershowitz, because of course.
And that letter and subsequent work was successful and Harvard University said fine.
Harvard Law School developed their own Title IX policy that is more reflective of legal proceedings because they believe in the law.
Not a good school!
I'm going to go ahead and say not a good school now.
I'm gone that far.
Yeah.
Ethically.
Maybe learn some good law stuff.
It is kind of concerning.
All three of the folks affiliated in this are all Harvard Law, and they all signed the letters, obviously, because this is what they believe.
When did they sign these things?
2015.
Right, 2015.
So yeah, Alan Dershowitz was respected right up until like a few minutes after Trump was elected, I think, or a few minutes before.
One or the other.
Yeah.
So yeah, so they pushed forward.
They got their own Title IX policy that was more reminiscent of, I think, what we would see with the DeVos standards when those came through.
That's who Janet Halle is.
So now we know.
We're only one feminist in.
We're one feminist in.
All right, well, it's become clear based on the indications I'm getting from hot correspondent Lydia Smith that while that first fake feminist was one thing, this next one is entirely too much to cover on this first part here.
Yeah.
I don't know.
This is entirely like, I have no spoilers for me.
I'm really excited about this, but like, I get the indication.
It sounds like you're calling it here on part one because it's just too much to start getting into the next fake feminist.
And that's going to be a whole fucking thing.
Yeah, I think we got we got a lot of good stuff on this next one.
Oh, I can't wait.
Yeah.
So we'll call it there.
And I'm excited for part two.
We get to hear about there's so much more to this debunking.
And that's and that's the thing.
That's the thing about bunking in the first place.
Is it takes so much more work to tease it apart than it did to just write this shitty fucking article.
But you know what?
No one's doing it or not enough people are doing it or they're being overwhelmed by Ben Shapiro on the SEO, you know, on the internet.
So we're that's that's our job now and we accept.
So therefore.
We're calling it for part one and I can't wait to hear even more about how Michael Powell sucks and these people aren't really feminists or they're fake feminists or they're actually secret Nazis or whatever it'll be.
Who knows?
I don't know.
I haven't been the spoiler yet.
So we'll see you for part two.
I'm excited.
Oh, and I will make that part two available early on patreon.com slash where there's well, please, pretty please support the show.
I promise you.
That it is directly contributing to us being able to do it more and more frequently and more often.
I promise you that where things are in the works, we're making it happen.
Hopefully.
Yep.
So please, patreon.com slash where there's will, we'll give you part two early and there's going to be other bonus stuff.
