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This article on March 16, 2001.

A lynch-mob mentality is brewing on campuses across America. In the cross-hairs: male students and faculty accused of inappropriate sexual conduct.

But even in this era of the politically correct campus, some people still care about protecting the rights of the accused: the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Its founders: civil-liberties lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate and University of Pennsylvania prof Alan Charles Kors, the authors of “The Shadow University,” a 1998 expose of politically correct campus outrages.

Headquartered in Philadelphia, ��֭����’s board of advisers includes liberals such as Village Voice writer Nat Hentoff and conservatives such as Boston radio talk-show host David Brudnoy.

Since its founding 14 months ago, FIREhas received more than a thousand contacts from students who claim their U.S. colleges violated their rights. These cover many issues, including free speech and legal equality. But ��֭����’s work on due process highlights the troubles facing the accused on campus today:

* The University of Pennsylvania administration ordered an undergraduate male charged with assault to leave campus before his trial began. School officials allegedly intimidated and threatened witnesses scheduled to testify on the defendant’s behalf.

Even the student’s requests to access the audio tapes and written transcripts of the trial were denied until FIREstepped in, wrote a strongly worded letter and resolved the issue.

* Columbia’s new sexual-misconduct policy denies defendants the rights to counsel, to confront their accuser and to cross-examine witnesses. FIREis now in the process of deciding whether or not to file litigation. (Columbia may revise the policy first.)

* ��֭����’s most-publicized due-process case comes from Brandeis University. Undergrad David Arlen Schaer, accused of raping his sometime girlfriend, was found guilty of “unwanted sexual activity” and suspended for the summer. But schools officials had denied him access to a lawyer. When witnesses took the stand to testify against him, he had to cross-examine them himself.

Schaer sued Brandeis. FIREhelped to take the case all the way to the state’s top court, where he eventually lost. The court ruled that private universities don’t have to respect students’ rights in internal proceedings. So Brandeis can treat its students as guilty until proven innocent whenever it wants to.

Guilty until proven innocent? Yes, that’s the bottom line of these campus “sexual misconduct” policies. The defenders of those rules think that, in the case of rape and related wrongs, the rights of the accused matter less than the fight against crime. Anyway, they note, FBI statistics show that only 3 percent of sexual-assault reports are false.

Yes, rape is an awful crime; rapists belong in prison, not on campus. But what about that 3 percent? They’re innocent.

And if those accused of a particular sort of crime can’t defend themselves, then it becomes much easier to make false accusations. These sexual-misconduct codes are an invitation to abuse.

Should schools work to prevent and punish sexual misconduct? Of course. But not by chucking the principles of the Constitution out the window.

As for ��֭����, many on the left claim that it’s a bunch of press hounds, “out to get” administrations across the country. But a look at the statistics says otherwise: 75 percent of ��֭����’s cases are resolved before they ever reach a litigation phase.