News Archive

The Trump administration has altered Title IX sexual harassment regulations, and a story about the changes, published in Ms. Magazine, contains comments from Professor Jennifer Drobac. Professor Drobac is widely recognized as an expert in this area of law.

The story notes that the recent changes in Title IX provide “unprecedented procedural protections to students facing school discipline for sexual misconduct—protections that students facing other kinds of school misconduct charges are generally not granted.”

“Secretary DeVos’s new regulations treat schools like courtrooms, which they are not,” Professor Drobac said in the story. “Title IX mandates equal access to education—but these regulations grossly narrow the definition of sexual harassment and may prevent schools from disciplining offenders unless the harassing conduct is severe, pervasive and objectively offensive.”

Professor Drobac is an author of the textbook, Sexual Harassment Law: History, Cases and Practice, recently published by Carolina Academic Press. She co-authored the book with Professor Carrie N. Baker of Smith College and Professor Rigel C. Oliveri of the University of Missouri School of Law.  Professor Drobac is at work on her next book, The Myth of Consent, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press. That work will explore the neuroscience of adult decision making and how the science should influence law reform, particularly the law of consent. She is a Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law.