Betsy DeVos appears in these excerpts chiefly as the Secretary of Education in the Trump administration, identified by name in discussions of campus due process and, in passing, as the object of a heckler’s veto. The excerpts do not supply biographical details, a state of residence, a confirmation date, or a full account of her tenure; they record only the actions and episodes the speakers attribute to her department or to her by name.
The “Dear Colleague” letter and its rescission
In a December 2022 episode, Joe Cohn of FIRE describes a lawsuit his organization filed “back in the final days of the Obama administration” over the “Dear Colleague” letter. That letter, he says, was eventually mooted out when President Trump’s Department of Education agreed with FIRE, withdrew the letter voluntarily, and began the binding process of creating regulations with notice and comment procedures. The rescission began in 2017, Cohn says, and the writing of a binding regulation was completed in 2020. Joe Cohn on Title IX and Due Process on Campus (2022)
Bob Zadek frames the same sequence in the same episode, calling the period that followed “the golden era when due process to a substantial degree is restored to campuses around the country, at least on paper and in fact.” He asks Cohn about statistics “during the letter era and the post-letter era after FIRE was able to encourage Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education to rescind the letter.” Joe Cohn on Title IX and Due Process on Campus (2022)
Cohn’s account of the letter’s effect is that schools “tripped over themselves to demonstrate to the federal government that they were really going to be tough on sexual harassment,” bringing their policies in line with what the department said. He notes a provision that schools should not allow the parties to cross-examine each other, and says that during the letter era schools were “undermining due process left and right in these campus sexual assault proceedings.” He adds that this was the only context in which the federal government told schools to provide fewer due process protections or risk federal dollars. Joe Cohn on Title IX and Due Process on Campus (2022)
Zadek characterizes the letter as “a regulation dressed up as a letter,” arguing that a letter is not rescindable and that the episode showed the letter had the impact of a regulation while bypassing the protections of the Administrative Procedure Act. Cohn agrees, saying the Department of Education in that period was “trying to have it both ways”—telling Congress it recognized the difference between regulations and guidance while telling schools its interpretation of what it would pursue. He recalls that then-Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Lamar Alexander, himself a former Secretary of Education and university president, pressed the head of OCR under oath on whether schools that did not follow the department’s interpretation would be pursued, and was told they would. Joe Cohn on Title IX and Due Process on Campus (2022)
Statistics and the “rape culture” premise
Zadek asks Cohn whether there was a rape epidemic on college campuses around the time of the letter, and what the statistics showed before and after. Cohn cites studies claiming as many as one in five, and later as many as one in four, students would be subject to some form of sexual harassment and misconduct before graduating—figures he says roll rape together with verbal harassment and rest on definitions broad enough to include “someone trying to attempt a goodnight kiss after a first date.” By contrast, he says, the Department of Justice, using much narrower definitions, found the incidence and rates of sexual violence on college campuses were a bit lower than among women of similar demographics off campus, and “well under 2%.” Do you know your rights? (2022)
Cohn declines to adjudicate whose methodology was sounder, saying he is not a social scientist, but argues the dispute is to some degree “a dog and pony show on the side” because policy should address instances when they are brought to a school’s attention without cutting corners on due process. He states that he wants every student who feels victimized to know how to report and get resources, and schools to have adequate resources to respond, but also that there should be no rush to judgment—rejecting what he calls the false dichotomy of choosing whether to support complainants or accused students. Do you know your rights? (2022)
The heckler’s veto
DeVos is named once outside the Title IX discussion. In an October 2017 episode on Antifa and campus speech, Zadek defines the heckler’s veto as a situation where hecklers in the audience are so disruptive that the speaker cannot be heard, and says this “happened to Betsy DeVos somewhat recently.” The excerpt breaks off at that point, mid-sentence, without further detail on the incident. Anthony L. Fisher on Antifa Violence & Neo-Reaction (2017)
The surrounding exchange concerns the distinction between government and private action. Guest Anthony L. Fisher argues that the heckler’s veto and the threat of violence to shut down speech on public property are not permissible, giving as an example a violent shutdown of a Milo Yiannopoulos event at Berkeley, a public school, while saying private universities and clubs may invite and disinvite anyone they choose. Zadek adds that the First Amendment limits only governmental action, so boycotts of Hollywood figures by private parties do not violate free speech rights. Fisher replies that the First Amendment also protects against the violence of the heckler’s veto, and that it is not within the First Amendment’s purview for a mob to shut down someone’s speech. Anthony L. Fisher on Antifa Violence & Neo-Reaction (2017)
Across episodes
Two December 2022 episodes—Do you know your rights? (2022) and Joe Cohn on Title IX and Due Process on Campus (2022)—carry the same Joe Cohn conversation, with the second containing the fuller account of the letter’s rescission and the binding regulation that followed; the excerpts show no development between them beyond the duplication of the same exchange. The 2017 episode Anthony L. Fisher on Antifa Violence & Neo-Reaction (2017) touches DeVos only as an example of heckler disruption, a different topic from the Title IX material.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state DeVos’s title beyond the references to her as head of the Department of Education in the Trump administration, nor do they give her background, confirmation, or the dates of her tenure. They do not describe the content of the 2020 binding regulation beyond the fact that it went through notice and comment, and they do not say what the Biden administration proposed or did. The heckler’s veto reference breaks off mid-sentence, so the incident itself is not described. No excerpt states what any case held or which amendment a case turned on.