On Eve of Trump Inaugural, Harvard Official Takes Key Title IX Post at Education Dept.

Kayana Szymczak, The New York Times, Redux

The Harvard official who oversaw a sweeping and controversial revision of the university’s sexual-assault policies has taken a job with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Mia Karvonides will be one of four officers there directing enforcement of the gender-equity law known as Title IX. She was Harvard’s first Title IX officer, and before that, a lawyer at the OCR office in Boston.

In her new position, she will advise top officials at the civil-rights office’s headquarters and work with regional directors around the country on a variety of civil-rights issues, including Title IX.

She told The Harvard Crimson that she welcomed the opportunity to be involved in civil-rights legal issues affecting other parts of the country.

“Just being able to go back to my broader portfolio of civil-rights work is important to me,” she said.

Her hiring, in the final days of President Obama’s term, was criticized by some Harvard law professors and conservative critics who consider the policy she helped enact at Harvard unfair to accused students.

Others welcomed her addition to the federal civil-rights office. They hope her support for strict adherence to Title IX will carry some weight in a Trump administration that’s widely expected to ease up on enforcement.

Ms. Karvonides will start her new job on January 18, two days before President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration.

Appointed officials are routinely jettisoned when new presidents take over, but other federal employees enjoy a layer of civil-service protection that guards them from politically motivated dismissal.

A spokesman for the Education Department confirmed that hers is a civil-service position.

Ms. Karvonides was hired at Harvard in 2013, at a time when college and university sexual-assault policies were being strictly scrutinized by the federal government. Title IX requires campus officials to investigate reports of sexual harassment and assault, whether or not the police are involved. Colleges that fail to respond to complaints promptly and fairly can face sanctions, including the loss of federal funds, although that penalty has never been imposed.

In 2014 a working group Ms. Karvonides oversaw released a new set of policies and procedures for handling complaints of sexual misconduct.

Among other things, Harvard introduced a new, lower standard for finding responsibility in sexual-assault cases. The “preponderance of the evidence” standard, favored by the Office for Civil Rights, meant that an offense was at least 51 percent likely to have occurred, rather than the higher “clear and convincing evidence” standard that previously had prevailed.

Some Harvard students said last year that they had been confused by what constituted “unwelcome conduct” under the revised policy.

The policy stated in part that the absence of “no” does not constitute consent to sexual activity, and a person who is intoxicated but not incapacitated can consent — a distinction students said can be hard to determine.

Ms. Karvonides’ office released clarifying documents after the federal government found, in 2014, that the university’s law school had violated Title IX with its school-specific policy.

Her struggles to satisfy critics, who saw the universitywide policy as skewed in favor of either accusers or accused students, were shared by Title IX officers around the country, who were also under federal scrutiny.

‘Very Troubling’

In an email to The Chronicle, Ms. Karvonides said 53 complaints had been filed since she took office, in 2013, and for each, “Harvard has scrupulously protected the rights of both parties who engage in our processes while thoroughly and sensitively investigating sexual assaults and other harassment cases.”

Among the protections in the policy, she said, both sides are fully informed of the specific conduct at issue, both can have a personal adviser and/or lawyer present at interviews with investigators, and both are allowed to respond to a draft report issued after the investigation. Both can appeal the Harvard administration’s decision.

Nevertheless, in 2015, 28 current and former Harvard Law School faculty members, including a former dean, wrote a letter, published in The Boston Globe, calling Harvard’s procedures “overwhelmingly stacked against the accused.”

Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard law professor who signed the letter, said she had found Ms. Karvonides’ hiring by the federal civil-rights office “very troubling.”

“It seems a sign that the current administration hopes by this and related moves to cement in place their unfortunate approach to the definition of sexual assault and enforcement of related policies,” she wrote in an email to The Chronicle.

The Obama administration’s definition of sexual assault, she said, is so broad that students engaging in “common dating behavior,” like drinking and making romantic overtures, can be found responsible for assault.

Under the current standards, Ms. Bartholet wrote, “students who engage in truly voluntary romantic and/or sexual relationships are at serious risk of being vilified as sexual offenders and hounded out of their universities.”

A group called Families Advocating for Campus Equality, known for its outspoken advocacy for accused students, also objected to Ms. Karvonides’ hiring. In a news release, it said that the Obama administration had hired her “in an effort to guarantee continued enforcement of misguided and illegal OCR Title IX policies.”

The group said that both Ms. Karvonides and the Obama administration had defined “unwelcome conduct” in ways that included name-calling and offensive statements, whether or not they were intended to harm someone.

But other observers have pointed out that the Office for Civil Rights has punished colleges for violating the rights of accused students, too. Last year the civil-rights office found that Wesley College, in Delaware, had violated Title IX by denying students accused of sexual violence a fair disciplinary process. That, said Dana Bolger, a founder of the victims’-rights group Know Your IX, demonstrates “that Title IX requires equity and fairness” in disciplinary hearings.

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.