Will Chamberlain talks with Heather Mac Donald about the Cornell 7 accusation, why Jane Doe's own 2024 statement to police does not describe a crime, and why handing the case to Letitia James does not change that. The conversation also digs into the old tort of seduction, whether Washington should impose stricter campus rules, the empty campus rape bureaucracy, and what colleges gave up in the 1960s.
In this episode:
Heather Mac Donald says the gang-rape story around the Cornell 7 is a fiction, and that Jane Doe took part voluntarily in a drug-soaked night at a fraternity.
She says Jane Doe drank heavily before she arrived, then drank more and took ketamine, and walked into the encounter on purpose.
She says the young men should not be prosecuted or sued, and that the night was instigated by Jane Doe.
She rejects the idea that the old tort of seduction fits these facts, because Jane Doe kept assenting.
She is wary of using the Department of Education to impose Liberty- or Hillsdale-style rules, because it strengthens the precedent for the next administration.
She describes how colleges dropped in loco parentis in the 1960s and 1970s, then built a Title IX bureaucracy on top of an anything-goes sexual culture.
She says the campus rape centers sit empty, because students the surveys label as victims say they were not raped.
She says the claimed one-in-four campus rape rate is not a real crime rate, and that rising female enrollment at Cornell shows people do not believe it.
She says conservatives have spent their energy debunking the rape-culture myth and not enough time criticizing the bacchanal itself.
She argues that female modesty, not another tribunal, is the practical protection.
She says alumni pressure at Penn after October 7, including Marc Rowan and Ross Stevens, has not fixed the anti-academic culture.
She leaves the policy program to others and says the job is to keep exposing the falsehood.
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8
Heather Mac Donald: Thomas W. Smith Fellow, Manhattan Institute · @HMDatMI
Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain
Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod
0:00 Jane Doe walked in on purpose
0:52 The Cornell 7 accusation
2:31 What the 2024 night actually was
5:45 Consent is the only moral language left
9:01 Defending the students, and the tort of seduction
12:33 Imposing real restrictions on the party scene through Title IX
17:31 What colleges gave up in the 1960s
21:12 Rape centers nobody calls
24:59 If the one in four statistic were real
29:03 Modesty, shame, and the defensive crouch
33:35 Federal power or alumni pressure
38:35 The Greek system
