Joe Biden Was a Change Agent on Title IX. But His Presidential Campaign May Shine a Harsher Light on Him.

AP Images

Eight years ago, Joseph R. Biden Jr. traveled to the University of New Hampshire to announce that the federal government was cracking down on colleges’ handling of campus sexual assault. If colleges didn’t start doing a better job of supporting victims, said Biden, then vice president, they’d risk violating Title IX, the gender-equity law.

“No means no if you’re drunk or you’re sober. No means no if you’re in bed, in a dorm, or on the street. No means no even if you said yes at first and you changed your mind,” Biden said in his remarks. “No means no.”

Laura L. Dunn was in the audience. Dunn had publicly shared her story of being sexually assaulted at a time when that wasn’t common, when “Title IX offices” on campuses didn’t exist.

As she watched the second-most-powerful person in the country talk about tackling campus rape, removing blame from victims, and holding perpetrators accountable, she started crying.

“It was kind of like everything I’d wished someone had told me along the way,” Dunn said.

That day, Biden gave her a hug. “I, as a survivor, needed that hug from him,” she said. “He is very much a fatherly figure in my mind when it came to what he did in that moment.”

Biden’s advocacy for women has been central to his public life for nearly three decades, as a longtime Democratic senator from Delaware and then as vice president under President Barack Obama.

Most recently, he has used his platform to put colleges on notice that they can’t ignore the sexual misconduct that’s harming their students. Advocates say the sweeping Title IX changes that have transformed higher education would not have happened without Biden’s support.

As Biden formally kicks off his 2020 presidential campaign on Thursday, he is likely to frame that legacy as an asset in the #MeToo era, which many see as a historic moment for women’s empowerment.

But after several women, including campus activists, said in recent weeks that Biden’s touching them made them uncomfortable, his legacy of helping women fight discrimination has lost some of its luster. As the campaign puts Biden under a microscope, his past conduct may draw an even harsher spotlight.

Some anti-rape advocates say they hope Biden will use that spotlight to his advantage — to apologize to women who feel he crossed a line, and to do a better job of modeling good behavior and consent.

‘It’s On Us’

Biden is well known for drafting the 1994 Violence Against Women Act when he was a senator, and pushing to expand the law’s scope in later reauthorizations.

A less-illustrious moment of his Senate career was his handling, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, of Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas in 1991, before Thomas was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Biden didn’t, for instance, call three other witnesses who could have described their own experiences of harassment by Thomas.

When Biden became vice president, he made campus sexual misconduct one of his key issues. The 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter rollout, the White House’s sexual-assault task force, the “It’s On Us” campaign, which encouraged students to intervene when they saw trouble — Biden made all of that happen.

Over the past five years, Biden has made numerous impassioned speeches about campus sexual assault — at the Oscars, at the Democratic National Convention, and at many colleges. He wrote an open letter to “Emily Doe,” the woman who came forward about being sexually assaulted by Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer, after she gave her victim-impact statement.

Biden’s remarks to introduce Lady Gaga at the 2016 Oscars, surrounded by dozens of student victims, were particularly momentous. “Let’s change the culture,” he said. “We must and we can change the culture so that no abused woman or man like the survivors you will see tonight ever have to ask themselves, ‘What did I do?’ They did nothing wrong.”

Biden’s foundation started honoring student anti-rape activists with “Biden Courage Awards.” At one point, Biden and Obama even vowed not to visit colleges that they didn’t think were serious about punishing students who had committed sexual assault.

Dunn, who became one of the nation’s most prominent campus anti-rape activists and who founded SurvJustice, a survivor-advocacy organization, said Biden was committed to supporting student victims. “He was always thinking about, What more do we need?” she said.

S. Daniel Carter, a longtime campus-safety expert who worked with Biden on Title IX issues, said it’s hard to overstate how meaningful Biden’s support has been. The vice president’s public announcement of the “Dear Colleague” letter, in 2011, Carter said, is what really got the attention of college presidents.

“This movement would not exist without Joe Biden,” he said.

‘Very Handsy’

But at the 2011 announcement, Carter remembers cringing before introducing Biden to Dunn. Carter worried that the vice president, who is also known for his occasional verbal gaffes, would make an offhand comment to her that wouldn’t be appropriate.

“That’s something that I, working in this field, have learned to be very mindful of,” he said. “You have to be careful of what you say to people who have experienced traumatic events in their life.”

When Dunn and Biden met, she said, he made a comment “that a politician would make.” She told him she’d been sexually assaulted as a college freshman. His response was something along the lines of: “What, were you 12 when you were in college?” He was complimenting her for looking so young, Dunn said.

She didn’t take offense, though “it wasn’t the right setting for that comment,” she said. She then told Carter about it, who chalked it up to “Uncle Joe” being “folksy.” (A spokesman for Biden didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

During Biden’s interactions with campus anti-rape activists, there have been other awkward moments. Over time, Sofie Karasek has felt increasingly conflicted about her meeting with Biden at the 2016 Oscars, when he “leaned down, took my hands, and put his forehead to mine,” she wrote in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post.

“#MeToo hadn’t yet exploded. There was no space for a nuanced discussion of whether that level of intimacy, between a 22-year-old and the vice president of the United States, was appropriate,” wrote Karasek, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and co-founder of End Rape on Campus, a survivor-advocacy group.

Eventually, she took the photo of the two of them down from her bookshelf. “Perhaps Biden meant to act like a comforting father or grandfather,” she wrote. “But he never asked whether that was OK.”

Among campus activists, “his invasive touching was an open secret,” said Caroline Heldman, an associate professor of politics at Occidental College. Heldman worked with students to file several Title IX complaints against Occidental, and wrote a book about the anti-rape movement. “He was known as being very handsy,” Heldman said, and not with men or with older women.

#MeToo Fatigue

In a video response released this month, Biden said: “I’ll always believe governing — quite frankly, life, for that matter — is about connecting, it’s about connecting with people. That won’t change. But I will be more mindful and respectful of people’s personal space.” He added: “I’ve worked my whole life to empower women.”

At a public speech a couple of days later, he told reporters: “It’s going to have to change somewhat how I campaign. It’s a new thing.” He joked twice during the speech that he’d had “permission” to hug people.

What upsets Carter now is that Biden has prompted him and many others to be introspective about their actions in the past — and yet, since women first went public about their discomfort with Biden’s touching, he has fallen short of taking his own advice.

“Nobody is saying that it was ever anything malicious,” Carter said. But Biden hasn’t yet made clear, the campus-safety expert said, that he understands what he did wrong.

Biden is an affectionate person who speaks from the heart, Dunn said, and he’s someone who can lead. In his presidential campaign, he should model consent, she said. That means asking people — upfront — to take a photo, give a hug, or take their hand.

Heldman said there is some public fatigue with the #MeToo conversations about harassment and discomfort, which may mean that Biden’s candidacy will face less scrutiny.

“Biden would’ve had a tougher time in 2017, when the #MeToo movement was in full swing,” she said, “than he is having today.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.