What Project 2025 Says About Due Process at Universities

Students accused of sexual misconduct deserve a fair trial before suspension or worse

The recently released Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership has been drawing questions and confusion over the last two weeks. The 922 page manifesto is an ambitious undertaking, with contributions from at least 140 people connected to Donald Trump or his prior administration and more than 60 contributing nonprofits.

It lays out a strategy for a possible next Trump administration. Trump has vehemently denied involvement with it and claims not to know of it. But the last time the Heritage Foundation released a policy manifesto like this, about 2/3s of the proposed regulations changed in their favor (stat from Axios).

It also talks about policies that have been left in limbo, like the regulations regarding how colleges deal with spats between quarrelsome couples, relationship drama, and accusations of sexual misconduct. These regulations are generally referred to as Title IX regulations.

Here’s some good news:

If you have a son in college, this Project 2025 helps to bolster due process as a legitimate topic of contention related to Title IX. 

“Project 2025’s recommendations that the groundbreaking 2020 DeVos Title IX regulations be restored and that Congress amend Title IX itself to include due process requirements are something I support wholeheartedly” Justin Dillon, famed Title IX litigator and attorney told me in an interview.

“So should any American who cares about fundamental fairness and thinks that show trials are best left on the ash heap of history” he added.

The manifesto calls for the next President to:
•Work with Congress to use the earliest available legislative vehicle to prohibit the department from using any appropriations or from otherwise enforcing any final regulations under Title IX promulgated by the department during the prior Administration. 

•Commence a new agency rulemaking process to rescind the current Administration’s Title IX regulations; restore the Title IX regulations promulgated by then-Secretary Betsy DeVos on May 19, 2020; and define “sex” under Title IX to mean only biological sex recognized at birth. 

•Work with Congress to amend Title IX to include due process requirements...."

Going Forward

Now that women are 75% of Ivy League presidents, 66% of college adminsistrators, and 60% of the overall student body, men find themselves outnumbered, with women administrators generally making and enforcing rules.

“Heterosexual males are at the bottom of prestige and attention on American college campuses” Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute told me.

“The dominant thrust of academic thinking in the humanities posits heterosexual white males as the bearers of a civilization deemed uniquely oppressive and rapacious, and thus white males are guilty of social injustice by heredity if not by current behavior” she added.

Mac Donald also said something I’ve been saying for years: Cross examination and fair notice should be legally required, but isn’t when colleges take crimes into their own hands and conduct their investigations away from the actual police.

“The right of cross examination is essential for judicial fairness. Students should also receive fair notice of the charges against them.”

Why these two tenents of basic criminal justice are so difficult to achieve is still incomprehensible to me. Imagine getting a notice that you have to be in court in 4 hours and you don’t know why, you don’t have time to review your charges, and you can’t cross examine your accuser. Unfair? I think so.

That is exactly what is currently happening at 100s of colleges across the United States. Since colleges are required to comply with federal Title IX guidelines to receive federal funding, many colleges are discriminating against their own male students in the name of equality.

American economist and former professor Mark J. Perry told X that the future of due process is fluctuating and it’s a bit difficult to make out trends yet. Each of the last four administrations tinkered with aspects of Title IX.

“If Trump wins and there's a change in leadership at DOE and OCR, that would have a favorable impact on due process. If [Democrats] win, it's business as usual for those issues. So that's the biggest wild card right now, and will be the biggest determinant of what happens over the next four years starting January 2025” Perry says.