Ken Starr's Defense Of His Baylor Tenure Is... Not Compelling

Ken Starr tries in vain to return his reputation back UP to "the guy who wasted money on a blowjob case."

kenneth-starr-politicians-photo-1Continuing to offer one embarrassing interview after another in a quixotic effort to restore his reputation, Ken Starr brought his not-so-much apology tour to Columbia Law School this afternoon to address students on… wait for it… Title IX.

“The guy who literally had to quit as head` of a Christian U because it had so many terrible sexual assault cases is coming to talk Title IX” wrote Shane Ferro at the time.

As one commenter on Twitter put it, “I suppose he knows a great deal about what not to do.”

I’ve been critical of Starr’s ill-fated public relations efforts from afar, but with the man rolling into my city, I just had to see it for myself. Are these talks he’s giving really as cringeworthy as the pullquotes and brief video clips suggest? Is there nuance to his indirect refutation of that damning Pepper Hamilton report that just isn’t coming through?

The answers, respectively, are yes and absolutely not.

Taken holistically, the event, sponsored by the Columbia Law Federalist Society, showcased Starr as an affable, professorial gent, right up until you remember that he’s smiling and chuckling about how to deal with sexual violence. “Cringeworthy” really is the proper word for these talks. It’s not even that he’s not making the occasional insightful observation — but he seems so powerfully disconnected from the idea that he should have any responsibility — legal or otherwise — for what Pepper Hamilton’s investigation says happened at Baylor that the whole event left quizzical expressions on the faces of some observers.

The talk was intended to be a general review of the state of Title IX, and it was an interesting law school lecture about the breadth and possible deficiencies of the statute. If this were a course trying to probe how to better draft a law to give students the best protections by pointing out where the statute sometimes fails to be clear, it would be a good enough speech. But this wasn’t really about reforming Title IX; there were no illusions that this was really Starr’s argument for exoneration by proxy. And on that score it was not very compelling.

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The precise text of Title IX doesn’t cover off-campus sexual violence, he’d implore, somehow without a hint of irony that he’d spent millions in taxpayer dollars trying to transform blowjobs into “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But Title IX, to Starr’s mind, is more about helping Baylor field a championship basketball team than protecting students from the consequences of sexual violence. He gamely argued that the school cannot get into assaults happening off-campus and at non-school sanctioned activities. To that end, he dismissed with the amiable laugh of a buddy pleading “can you believe the nerve of these people?” what most consider the key OCR guidance about the role of universities in dealing with off-campus sexual violence with “I thought you said this was a letter!” This is administrative “lawyerball” par excellence.

It was all a curious defense from a man who minutes later would declare that the school’s Christian mission required that they “go the extra mile,” raising the question of why any scrap of “guidance” would ever be downplayed, even if it wasn’t the legally binding floor.

Starr avoids the use of terms like “rape” for the most part and calls out “unspeakable tragedies” that can happen off-campus. It seems that he takes the word “unspeakable” quite literally, because he does not feel schools should say anything about them or have any role in dealing with the “fact of sexual violence,” only the after effects if the rape leads to bullying on school property. That’s actually how he reads the guidance letter. And while the proper reading of administrative guidance is a matter for another venue, it’s more important that he seems to actually feel that this is the only required response of an institution with a broader educational responsibility to create a safe learning environment for its students.

Starr also strikes upon the oft-repeated and at least partially valid point that there are justice concerns when academics and administrators deputize themselves as junior prosecutors in proceedings that lack the procedural safeguards of the criminal justice system — going on an extended tear about how Columbia is facing litigation over a Title IX sexual assault case too, that awkwardly read like, “See, you liberals have Title IX problems too.” That said, the procedural protections argument is deployed as a lazy cop-out in a world where many complaints got outright ignored, as Pepper Hamilton alleges happened here.

“I can’t tell you how much time I spent on appeals as president of Baylor.”

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It’s all right, Ken. Pepper Hamilton can…

Anyway, Professor Suzanne Goldberg responded to Starr’s remarks briefly but devastatingly. The “woe is me, I’m just an administrator unable to fathom these sexual misconduct cases” excuse doesn’t cut bait for a guy who pursued blowjobs to the ends of the Earth, represented Jeffrey Epstein, and wrote letters of support for a teacher eventually sentenced to over 40 years for sexually assaulting students. Starr’s protestations that lawyers shouldn’t be judged by the clients they represent — which is true — also missed the point. Goldberg wasn’t casting Starr as a bad guy for pursuing a legal career defined by themes of sexuality, she was exploding the “aw schucks, what can little old me do?” routine Starr tried to cultivate. He’s a former federal appellate judge with decades of experience at the intersection of law and sexuality — he’s no novice.

And if it’s a hard task, that’s because running a university should be harder than patting Art Briles on the back every Saturday.

Ken Starr Is Just Making Everything Worse
Irony Alert: Ken Starr Should Lose His Job For Not Investigating Real Sex Crimes
Ken Starr’s Embarrassing ESPN Interview — How Can He Still Teach Law?
Ken Starr Fails Deposition 101
Ken Starr Completely Out At Baylor Law School


Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.