In this seminar, the recent efforts by the Department of Education’s
Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to enforce Title IX policy are considered
in the broader context of unsuccessful attempts to establish protection
of sexual violence as a civil right in the United States. OCR
enforcement has stimulated both praise for its bold determination to
address an epidemic of sexual violence on college campuses and criticism
for its capacious exercise of administrative power. Bumiller reframes
this debate by considering how these regulatory measures are a new
chapter in a varied and complex story about the effectiveness of public
enforcement of civil rights statutes through the combination of
administrative and judicial action. Her work questions whether over
reliance on public agency enforcement potentially weakens the
participatory and democratic effects of private action. She also
examines how current federal regulations regarding Title IX continue a
pattern that over emphasizes criminal justice priorities.
Speaker: Kristin Bumiller, George Daniel Olds Professor in Economic and Social Institutions; Chair of Political Science, Amherst College