Heather: Jane Doe drinks 10, 10 drinks. before even showing up at the fraternity and then proceeds to have a beer there and proceeds to take ketamine. This is all voluntary. and she is walking in deliberately to a sex scene. The males don't have to do anything. You know, it's it's completely agreeable to everybody. And that when you have that, you're gonna see males behaving boorishly, but to be perfectly honest, there is sort of a A meme around here in in conservative circles that these males are evil. Frankly, I'm sorry. To me, this looks like it was. instigated throughout by the female.
Will Chamberlain: It's October 5th, 2026. Welcome to Counterweight. I'm Will Chamberlain, your host. Social media has exploded in rage at a group of seven college students who have been accused of gang raping another student back in 2024 at Cornell University. The purported victim, identified only as Jane Doe, has filed a civil lawsuit against both these students and the university. The problem? She gave a sworn statement to police back in 2024 that details a lengthy saga of depraved, degenerate sexual behavior and drug use, but suggests that all this appalling conduct was still consensual and therefore not criminal. The Lyne prosecutor declined to prosecute the Cornell Seven based on that statement, but social media outrage has led to the reopening of the case, and New York Governor Kathy Hokel replacing the Lyne prosecutor with Letitia James, the current attorney general of New York. My guest today is Heather McDonald, the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. A contributing editor of City Journal, and the New York Times bestselling author of The War on Cops. She has been writing about campus rape hoaxes and about the bizarre sexual culture on college campuses for decades. She walks through what Jane Doe is accusing these young men of, why the accusation does not hold, and why they are innocent. We also talk about what conservatives can do about the Bacchanal on campus and how to push these schools back towards actually educating their students. I hope you enjoy. All right, Heather McDonald, welcome to Counterweight.
Heather: Thank you so much, Will. It's great to be with you.
Will Chamberlain: let's just start by ki having you kind of give your best understanding of what's happened at Cornell for the benefit of everybody for the rest of the discussion.
Heather: Well, what's happening now is absolute hysteria and the embrace of a totally absurd fiction, which is that there was a horrible gang rape that occurred in twenty twenty four, that the law enforcement system was indifferent to the local district attorney. This is all the narrative that is that is shooting around the the internet for the last week. And that narrative says that the district attorney was indifferent to the survivor, that Cornell was dip indifferent to the survivor, and now she's finally coming forward and suing as a civil lawsuit everything in sight, especially the deep pockets of Cornell. And and the even broader narrative is that what happened at Cornell Is emblematic of the rape culture that females are subjected to in the United States and in college campuses. None of that is correct. the one good thing that's come out of this is that at some point the alleged survivor who is actually a voluntary participant in an absolutely disgusting orgy. she was worried when when word of this orgy got out, people were calling her a slut, and and this upset her, so she decided to change the narrative. I never would have known that the the concept of slut, which is extremely useful for for enforcing what should be norms of sexual propriety and modesty, was still active on college campuses. You know, it it suggests that there's Some people, at least, who are not completely on board, a Bach and all of inebriated sex where females deliberately drink themselves blotto, as happened here, precisely in order to lower their sexual inhibitions, in order to keep up with the liberated male libido that has been liberated from any kind of restraint by the 1960s culture of. maximal sexual liberation and and sex, premarital sex whenever you want it. So that that's a good sign. Other than that though, the the underlying incident which we can discuss is completely squalid and and depressing and I you know that parents are paying God knows what the Cornell tuition is, it's probably like eighty thousand, ninety thousand to have their children go and and simply engage in these orgy fests of drugs ketamine and and and drinking blotto instead of using their time there productively to actually fill some knowledge into their empty noggins is is status quo in in the university scene today but but very discouraging
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, I I suspect that everybody has the obvious intuition that the conduct here is just awful, but yet we are we're all sort of in a liberal prison where the only way we can interpret right and wrong is through the lens of consent. And so we're cha everybody's channeling this impulse that, like, yes, people should not be engaged in ketamine fueled orgies on college campus and then translating it only into the question of of whether or not there's consensual there's consent to the drug fueled orgies on college campuses. And it seems like The actual correct answer to this is there should be no drug field orgies on college campuses, whether or not the participants consent to that or not.
Heather: Absolutely. And you know, we had norms of female modesty and I'm gonna use an extremely dangerous word, chastity, God forbid, for good reason, because the male libido is voracious and it is immoral, amoral, you know, mows down whatever is in its way and marriage, the norm of marriage of no sex until you're married married, and and females being gatekeepers literally to their own physical body, was a way of putting that libido in check and taming it, redirecting it towards noble ends of aspiration and accomplishment so that you could actually woo a female to be willing to have intercourse with you as opposed to having her drink herself blood. It has happened here with the so-called Jane Doe, and I hope that her name is soon released, given that the males are being crucified with their males names being released. Anyway, Jane Doe drinks 10, 10 drinks. before even showing up at the fraternity and then proceeds to have a beer there and proceeds to take ketamine. This is all voluntary. and she is walking in deliberately to a sex scene. The males don't have to do anything. You know, it's it's completely agreeable to everybody. And that when you have that, you're gonna see males behaving boorishly, but to be perfectly honest, there is sort of a A meme around here in in conservative circles that these males are evil. you know, they certainly should not be criminally prosecuted. That would be outrageous. They should not be held liable monetarily, but they committed some horrible sin here. Frankly, I'm sorry. To me, this looks like it was. instigated throughout by the female. And again, given male nature, if it's not forced to restrain itself, I'm frankly not surprised and I'm not all that horrified by what happened here from the male perspective. But that that I know puts me way out into the outer reaches of a strange blend of morality and amorality.
Will Chamberlain: So I d I a hundred percent agree with you on the question of, you know, I think the were the right wing movement needs to go to the wall for these young men and not let what happened to Derek Chauvin happen to these young men. I see a railroad incoming where, I mean, obviously Kathy Hokel has appointed Letitia James, who had already stated that she believes that the the you know the the kids are guilty. So I think we should be absolutely going to wall for these boys to make sure they have our the most robust legal defense possible. we didn't for Chauvin. I mean, I I I had a different guest on here who will wrote a whole book about the Derek Chauvin trial. And what one of the, you know, remarkable things you forget it was that there was a slew of pro bono legal representation that came in behind the prosecutors of all things. And Shoven only had the one defense lawyer and as a result missed a bunch of opportunities in that case. That shouldn't happen here. But I I I sort of wonder, you know, while I am I am sympathetic to the idea that under current law these boys are not liable and should not be held liable in any way. I was thinking about fixes to this problem because I'm a lawyer and I want to figure out ways to use the law to fix things. And what I I was reading about older torts, and one of them was the tort of seduction, which is the it's an older concept, more turn of the century type stuff. But the the basic idea is that the father of a an unmarried woman had a property interest in her daughter's chastity and therefore would have the right to sue a a young man if he seduced her daughter. And I was actually thinking to myself, maybe this is, you know, the actual correct moral intuition here, which is that indeed men do need to be restrained, but perhaps they should be affirmatively and transparently restrained by the law, saying that we have a tort on the books that says you will be civilly liable if you engage in conduct like this to the father of the of the woman that you sleep with. I I that seems reasonable to me. I don't know if that seems reasonable to you.
Heather: Yes, but I don't see that applying to this fact situation. but
Will Chamberlain: Yeah.
Heather: let's first note that what's going on here either through your legal theory or in the broader left wing discourse is that we are making males the guardians of female well being and assuming that the female has no capacity to say no to determine her own fate. And I'm willing to live with that as if we can just be honest about it and say females are too dopey to be able to protect themselves and they do need males to act chival with a is chivalry. you know, to say I will restrain myself because I can't trust the female. But in this case, even if we do accept that males owe a duty of of sort of property rights to the father, which is interesting, and it certainly was the case that chastity was a commodity on the marriage market and understandably in this case it simply does not apply she walked into the Frat House with the intention of meeting the first defendant. And I don't remember who proposed what first that they have sex, but she was certainly totally amenable to that. And then the set we have a threesome, she's amenable to that. All this is being asked of her. She assents constantly. so I don't see any seduction here. She's not obviously a and and certainly she's not a a a wilting flower, and I doubt whether she lost her chastity this night. she seems way too comfortable with the the sex act. maybe
Will Chamberlain: I I think that's a fair point. You know, I think that even even under my legal theory, you are quite right that it's not clear there would be civil liability. So let's let's I I doubt that the anybody's gonna agree with me on this bringing back chastity as a tort thing. but I actually have another interesting, what probably more practical idea, relatively more practical, which is you know, we have this massive Title IX infrastructure that you've written about, like the entire the the campus rape industry and the tribunals and the kangaroo courts. there's one option, which is to simply get rid of it outright and perhaps we still do that. But the intuition I have is if you know the Department of Education is able to pose these incredible restrictions on these universities, then that's also a lever with which you could then impose what actually should be the rules on these universities. Like you you you could put impose preemptive regulations that say every university in the country needs to be like Liberty University. you know, single sex storms, no drugs, harsh rules. you could basically impose top down from the federal government the rule sets that work at like Thomas Aquinas and Liberty in Hillsdale, our best Christian colleges. I don't know what you think about that.
Heather: Have no objection in theory to those being the rules,
Will Chamberlain: Mm-hmm.
Heather: especially today when there the sort of social informal stigma against grotesquely promiscuous sex has been wiped out by radical feminism. but I'm I'm ambivalent about it being a federal mandate, and it's not because I'm some radical libertarian, but and this is a dilemma in all of the university reform, the campus reform that the Trump administration is trying to do. he's strengthening the precedent for the left to take over universities again and it's not as if he's doing anything that is so new because the left has been imposing its mandates, but doing it when we do it it it strengthens the precedent and it will make it all the more likely that the left takes the power and runs with it. So I don't know. you could have, you can imagine, you know, our solution is going to be that every male needs to be have 60 hours a week of sexual harassment training, that that's the way we're going to be combating this problem. So I I don't know. And then one can also ask What's the chicken and what's the egg? What's the cause and what's the effect? You say they work at rules like this work at Liberty and Hillsdale, but would they work elsewhere? Again, I'm I'm ambivalent. I'd I'd have to think it through. I think there's been real benefits, but there's also risks and costs. Nevertheless, that should be the ideal. And and we did have, you know, there were rules like this. We forget that. there were rules against males in a female dorm before. So to that extent you're absolutely correct. And there was punishment and rules against drinking, and the and the colleges just threw up their hands in the 60s when you had these entitled, affluent, spoiled, narcissistic students deciding that they were going to liberate society, but certainly themselves from. Norms of sexual restraint and propriety. And the colleges made a little feeble effort initially, maybe to push back, but then opened it wide up. And so now you have the insane situation of college-sponsored sex weeks and you know instruction being handed out for. how to use dental dams and and maximizing your orgasm at the same time that you have we at least we used to have the take back the night rallies and the one could say the prudishness of the campus rape hysteria that tries to make females into victims of these awful male males when they've been completely complicitous in it. As I say at this point, colleges are absolutely participants in the anti-academic, anti-scholarly bacchanal that goes on on a regular basis.
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, some of my intellectual project has always been a bit I have a deep hostility to the university system, and I think most conservatives should and rightfully do. and perhaps I think this is an unexplored lever to really, you know, do some real damage to the university system and make them less appealing or less appealing to the sort of people who aren't in there to be interested in knowledge. which I think might be a positive thing. ahead.
Heather: it's sort of everybody except for maybe the the most rigorous tech, but I mean they would say yeah, they're not really into the knowledge, so you're absolutely right.
Will Chamberlain: So I I wanted to I wanted to explore a little more in detail because, you know, you've written a a ton about this for a very long time. And in particular, I want to explore more detail like the what changed in the university system in the 60s. Like, I mean, I know you you just talked about they, you know, they just kind of threw up their hands at at liberation, but was this just like a standard cultural thing and basically all universities had normal rules about this stuff, and then they just kind of folded in the face of. the sexual liberation movement of the sixties.
Heather: Yeah, I again there used to be very strict rules against males coming into a female dorm or vice versa, and you would have sign in sheets, and there was an attempt by the university to act in the the legal phrases you know in loco parentis that the parents are are absent and so the university is going to take over. The role of parent in trying to demand responsible behavior from students and to protect females against the male libido, which is something that needs to be done either formally or informally. But then students started complaining: well, why, you know, why should you keep males out of the dorms and They demanded that there be access, no no chaperones, no sign-ins. And and I remember I was in college in the 70s. making a demand just became an end in itself. So if there was any remaining shred of reality that that recognized male-female differences, that had to go. And so you had mixed-sex dorms, and I remember like the bathrooms, we we had to get rid of single-sex bathrooms. Which is absurd, as if females are on average happy about having some naked guy in the shower next to them. all of this is obviously a a long harbinger of what is happening with the t unbelievable trans movement, which is the same thing that we should subject young girls to having males in their in the private spaces. but yeah, the universities they caved and then the administration became populated with products of the counterculture revolution that were not at all inclined to push back but believed you know that students should be liberated and but but it then gave rise to another weird Paradox of the university system with regards to sex, which is at the same time that the universities are handing out brochures on maximizing orgasm, you have these highly technical rules for deciding what is consent and what is not, and this whole bureaucracy to oversee it, as if this is not some catonic. you know, primeval impulse and then you you overlay it with rules as complex as something one might come across in Florence Renaissance Italy for regulating contracts and and you know credit lines and promissory notes. so the the unit it's just bizarre. You have you have this anything goes ethic Overseen by an extraordinarily complicated bureaucracy.
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, it strikes me that there's like
Heather: That's quite a bit.
Will Chamberlain: the combination of the American impulse towards like maximum liberation and also maximum lawyering going on there, right? Like so people are, you know, maximally free to
Heather: Yeah.
Will Chamberlain: do what they want. But there is whenever you have lawyers involved with anything, you get a bias towards tribunals and judging because that's what lawyers know. like what's
Heather: And and in the university the bias is towards bureaucracy. So there's just this
Will Chamberlain: Mm, that too.
Heather: massive Title IX bureaucracy and they all created their the universities created these campus rape hotlines and crisis centers. And as I wrote in my early and and present takedown of the campus rape hoax in two thousand eight in City Journal, Nobody calls. You know, they they set up this whole rape apparatus thinking, one in four women are are violated sexually assaulted in their college careers. So we need to create, you know, a safe space for them and they'll all be calling. And nothing they never call and and you you the members of the campus rape bureaucracy go around talking to students, trying to get them to use our rape center, but they're very sad because They just aren't getting the clients because fortunately there's a a certain common sense still existing in the students. It turns out the government classifies them as rape victims based on some very shoddy methodology. And when you ask the students who the government or the The the social science sex researchers classify as rape victims. When you ask the actual victims, were you raped? They say, No, I wasn't. so that's part of the reason why these rape bureaucracies are just not used, because there still is a shred of common sense where females, unlike, well, Jane Doe in this Cornell case, initially she was pretty accurate about what happened and surprisingly willing to take responsibility. She said in many communications, you know, none of this was a crime in her communications with her sex partners afterwards. and you know nothing you guys did was criminal. So she even she initially was was pretty honest with herself and it was only you know when she started feeling shame as she should that was a very valid response that she decides to take advantage of the massive victim ideology that is there for the you know inviting every female to to embrace
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, she would deserve credit for her candor had she not filed that that lawsuit and decided to, you know, go back on all that. I'm actually of the of the opinion that there, you know, maybe something for federal authorities to do here is to sort of although I don't know they'd have jurisdiction, but it's to keep an eye on when she actually gets in court and decides to make some statements under oath and then to go after her for making false sworn statements because she made a sworn statement that exonerated these young men. quite a while back. Yeah, I still I I lean towards the intuition that th this should all, you know, be burned to the ground, that all these people need to be need to find productive employment instead of sitting around with these ridiculous campus rape tribunals. all right. So if if not my idea, which is use the existing infrastructure to impose Liberty, university and Aquinas style rules on all the all the universities, which I think you should you should give more thought to, because I don't think your precedent argument is very strong. Remember, Democrats do unprecedented things all the time. So I think that objection is not not the strongest one. but if not that, then what what would your best idea be to sort of like from a policy perspective to to do something about this?
Heather: I'm better at the critique, which is a different way of thinking than actually
Will Chamberlain: Fair enough.
Heather: believing and having the optimism to believe in in policy and coming up with solutions. You have to be a little credulous because I having written about social decline for 30, 40 years now. There's not a single sane policy solution that hasn't been proposed for the last 50 years and none of it has made a damn bit of difference as far as I can tell. So I guess I'm I I leave that to others. I will just say that we need to continue shaming the utter deception that's going on here and you know, trying to blow the whistle on this massive victim complex that is trying to argue a falsehood about Western civilization, which is that it is a patriarchy, that it is a rape culture that's preposterous. females and and the you know, the other thing that is definitely noticeable here: if this was a rape culture on campuses, why do females keep beating down the doors to get into campuses? The the female population at Cornell. has gone up over the last ten years or twenty years from a little under fifty percent to now close to fifty four percent because they all want to get into college, a co ed college. and you know why do they keep trooping into these frat houses that are we're told are Hotbeds of sexual assault. And there's two possibilities. One, narrative that we live in this patriarchy and that colleges are are like scenes of rape that at a at a rate that is unthinkable. You know, one in the claimed one in four statistics, 25% rate of the the second most serious felony that exists is out of this world. Detroit, you put in all four violent felonies. Its crime rate is 2.4 Per a hundred K, we're claiming twenty-five percent a hundred K. That's unthinkable. I mean, there's no society that has that degree of a rape rate, not even African tribal wars when they're using rape as a as a tool of war. so why are why are students still going in? Why are they still going to the frat houses these females? Two so two two s explanations. One, it doesn't exist. This whole thing is a fiction. Number two, students girls are too idiotic To protect themselves and stay out of the frat house in if it really is this maelstrom of sexual assault, in which case they shouldn't be in college. And I'm happy to live with that explanation as well.
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, no, I think that's a hundred percent right. I think that, you know, I remember you've made that point in in r in your writing as well, that like if if indeed the twenty-five percent statistic was right, then you know, parents would be keeping their kids from these places at all costs. But every everybody knows that statistic is wrong and it's just an obvious revealed preference that we we know. But you know, I think one thing this incident has highlighted in the sense that I think conservatives have been so focused on debunking that particular myth, right? The rape culture myth, that they haven't spent their time Criticizing the Bacchanal reality of colleges. You know, I I think that that's that's what this reveals because we can all look at this and see, okay, obviously this is a false accusation. Obviously, these kids should not be prosecuted. But like, what on earth? You know, wait a second, at Cornell University, inside the frat house, affiliated with the university, there are there's a drug and kedominorgy. And what what happened as a result of that? Like you could make a pretty compelling argument that the fraternity should have. Should have been shut down just based on you had a drug and ketamine orgy outside of a consent, and yet it wasn't.
Heather: at this point, I guess I don't even know if anybody is ever, if there's any rules against drug use on campus. And I don't know if Fratz or they're sort of like they've got their own law, what sort of jurisdiction universities have over them. But I I completely agree. And and there needs to be a much broader discourse that is right now, you know, just marginal among Catholics or whatever about as I said. in the beginning about female modesty, if not chastity, that that's the best way to protect yourself if you really think that you know this is a a rape culture. Don't get in bed with the guy and there are better things that you can be doing with your time. so I I you know and I I would love to know the sources of this come from what kind of majors? I wonder if the people doing very difficult STEM fields are participating in this as well. They may be, I don't know. But yeah, this is not initially why people thought colleges should exist, which is to be a place of of maximal just sexual perversion. I mean it is. This is perversion that was going on, but We have two sets of of moral standards, you know, we are completely hysterical about so-called racism in one direction. Nobody objects to anti-white black racism, but if anybody can be accused of anti-black racism, it's like the most serious sin that you can engage in if you're white and say something that is viewed as racist about black crime. At the same time, we are totally amoral when it comes to things that are very fundamentally necessary to maintain a stable society. So it's a it's not as if I think there's a conservative line, which is that we're all relativistic and we've thrown aside any moral code. That's not true. We have simply moved it from what it used to be focused on, which was decisions about personal behavior, about sexual behavior, about honor, about honesty, about nobility. That's all out the window. And then we are very Puritan and Draconian about things that violate the code of silence with regards to different disparities in populations and anything that can be regarded as a product of the evil Western civilization of of of racism and oppression and colonialism and sexism, etcetera.
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, it strikes me that concern is of just, I mean, this is a product of us being in a defensive crouch on any number of issues, right? So this is an example of us being in a defensive crouch where we're defending against the kangaroo courts, but we're not making similar demands of the universities to adhere to a different moral code, a w a more appropriate one. we're playing defense on racism where we, you know, are saying, No, no, no, no, no, we're not racist, rather than saying you are affirmatively racist towards white people. I mean I just had a whole fight actually with Sarah Huckabee Sanders over that ridiculous ad she put out where she was, you know, using a a white male as like the emblematic loser on SNA welfare benefits, which is just sort of, you know, you're a Republican, like why are you insulting your own voters? And especially in such a way that is not representative of of the actual facts on the ground. but in just in any number of cases, I feel like we're in a defensive crouch. And I guess to get back to the subject here, I feel like what you've You you lay out another interesting option, which is if we're, you know, trying to, you know, put the universities on a little bit of a vice. On the one hand, we can put pressure on them because they've allowed their campuses to become Bacchanals. That's an obvious lever of pressure. The other is we do it. I know that the Trump administration announced that it's cutting off or it's gonna cut off aid for bad majors or is something along those lines. Like it's not gonna subsidize the federal student loans for, you know, X studies. ex science, right? If you call something a science, it's not a science. If you call studies, it's not studying anything. and then we can actually put real pressure on the universities and and get them to, you know, return to a probably much less popular but much more virtuous institution.
Heather: But again, you know, I agree with the goals completely of what the Trump administration is doing. They their intuitions about what constitutes an insult to academic activity and and is the most absurd simulacrum of scholarship and knowledge. They're absolutely right. But again, I and I know you say that the left will already do it and then will do it again, and you're absolutely right. Nevertheless, I just think about putting that power in the opposite hands, which is gonna happen, and Democrats starting deciding to shut down constitutional studies or or history that is seen as too patriotic, military history, and and saying no, you don't have an a a large enough quotient here of recognizing the victims of of the West and so we want a curriculum or a school bureaucracy that is making sure that students really don't graduate without having been a hundred and fifty percent marinated in left wing ideology. and I do not have an answer to this. I grapple with it all the time, which is worse Backing off on federal power and hoping that somehow private means will take care of it, or saying we have power now, let's just use it to the max and and see what happens. And you know, right, after the October Hamas attacks in Israel, there were efforts by alumni to Correct their schools. There was a whole group of alumni from Morton Business School at UPenn and UPenn more generally that tried to get a boycott of Mark Rowan and Ross Stevens trying to boycott alumni giving, and they even composed a very impressive new constitution for the University of Pennsylvania that would put the emphasis on real knowledge and not fake all the fake sciences that you referred to and freedom of speech. But I think knowledge is the most important thing that we don't talk about. And it it got a lot of attention initially, but to be perfectly honest, I think it may just have run out of steam because most alumni are either affirmatively left. wing and believe in the identity politics or are ignorant and they think the university is the same as when they attended it, although it was probably already pretty left wing. It's been left wing for a very long time. And they just want the ego of giving a lot of money, getting their names on on buildings. So the private solution of let the Private actors, the alumni take care of this. That doesn't seem to have worked all that well either. one could say, well, there's been these little efforts of we're gonna beef up the anti-Semitism training at Harvard and whatnot, and I think that's pretty bogus as well. so this gets into more complicated matters that we don't shouldn't get into. But I'm just saying I'm arguing against myself, which is that I can't prove that a non-governmental solution will cure the nauseating anti scholastic illness that has taken over so much of our universities today.
Will Chamberlain: I'll I'll beef up your argument a little bit. I think you I think you have a very good point on at least subject matter in terms of like t the government discriminating against subject matter because liberals really haven't done too much of that. And so in a world reopen that, that actually could lead to a reciprocal response that I think would be more than what we would see in the status quo. Don't I don't think that that works as well with the idea of imposing again the sort of Christian style rules on everybody because they've already gone to the max on the insane. full sexual liberation and full kangaroo court things. So I don't know I don't know what more they would do in response to us taking any action here. I
Heather: It's hilarious to think about, you know, it would just be such a a cold shower on these people if they actually the students, you know, to come up against these rules. So I I like the idea. It's it's very fun to think about. but
Will Chamberlain: Right, because like what I mean, what are they gonna say? And there's a whole there's already the existing like pre not precedent, but there's the existing legal rationale and legal infrastructure to do stuff like this. Like you just say, you know, for the same reason that the Department of Education could go and say, Well, you need to put all these rules in place to deal with rape, blah, blah, blah. We can say you need to put this rule in place to deal with rape. And the rule just happens to be single sex dorms. And I'm not sure what your answer to that is if or and how you would challenge maybe you you'd have some argument that it's just like an overbroad regulation and you go for like arbitrary and capricious or something. But I I don't see much else other than that.
Heather: Now the other issue here is is the the Greek system and I really I shouldn't be speaking about it because I have no connection to it. and I have to say I'm not I don't have an intuitive sense of identification with it. I think it proved its worth during the year of of pro Hamas frenzy on college campuses with these idiots demonstrating against their own interests. You know, I I attended one of the major protests at at Columbia University in New York as if as if you know the the Hamas fighters in in Gaza are going to be thrilled about having queer ideology in favor of them and wouldn't, you know, throw them off of of buildings. but I've lost my train of thought. I know you can
Will Chamberlain: that's fine. I've lost my train of thought and I've I've definitely run through my qu list of questions.
Heather: No, you were ask
Will Chamberlain: Well we we've we've covered plenty of ground, I think. and I'll have to I I'm looking forward to thinking hard more harder about how to wield the power of the state against the universities. That's my primary project here. But anyway, Heather McDonald, thank you so much for joining Counterweight. and if you've gotten to the end
Heather: Thank you, Will. you.
Will Chamberlain: of this, then Clearly, we're doing something right. So we're a new podcast. Please go ahead, like and subscribe. and we will see you next time.
Will Chamberlain: It's October 5th, 2026. Welcome to Counterweight. I'm Will Chamberlain, your host. Social media has exploded in rage at a group of seven college students who have been accused of gang raping another student back in 2024 at Cornell University. The purported victim, identified only as Jane Doe, has filed a civil lawsuit against both these students and the university. The problem? She gave a sworn statement to police back in 2024 that details a lengthy saga of depraved, degenerate sexual behavior and drug use, but suggests that all this appalling conduct was still consensual and therefore not criminal. The Lyne prosecutor declined to prosecute the Cornell Seven based on that statement, but social media outrage has led to the reopening of the case, and New York Governor Kathy Hokel replacing the Lyne prosecutor with Letitia James, the current attorney general of New York. My guest today is Heather McDonald, the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. A contributing editor of City Journal, and the New York Times bestselling author of The War on Cops. She has been writing about campus rape hoaxes and about the bizarre sexual culture on college campuses for decades. She walks through what Jane Doe is accusing these young men of, why the accusation does not hold, and why they are innocent. We also talk about what conservatives can do about the Bacchanal on campus and how to push these schools back towards actually educating their students. I hope you enjoy. All right, Heather McDonald, welcome to Counterweight.
Heather: Thank you so much, Will. It's great to be with you.
Will Chamberlain: let's just start by ki having you kind of give your best understanding of what's happened at Cornell for the benefit of everybody for the rest of the discussion.
Heather: Well, what's happening now is absolute hysteria and the embrace of a totally absurd fiction, which is that there was a horrible gang rape that occurred in twenty twenty four, that the law enforcement system was indifferent to the local district attorney. This is all the narrative that is that is shooting around the the internet for the last week. And that narrative says that the district attorney was indifferent to the survivor, that Cornell was dip indifferent to the survivor, and now she's finally coming forward and suing as a civil lawsuit everything in sight, especially the deep pockets of Cornell. And and the even broader narrative is that what happened at Cornell Is emblematic of the rape culture that females are subjected to in the United States and in college campuses. None of that is correct. the one good thing that's come out of this is that at some point the alleged survivor who is actually a voluntary participant in an absolutely disgusting orgy. she was worried when when word of this orgy got out, people were calling her a slut, and and this upset her, so she decided to change the narrative. I never would have known that the the concept of slut, which is extremely useful for for enforcing what should be norms of sexual propriety and modesty, was still active on college campuses. You know, it it suggests that there's Some people, at least, who are not completely on board, a Bach and all of inebriated sex where females deliberately drink themselves blotto, as happened here, precisely in order to lower their sexual inhibitions, in order to keep up with the liberated male libido that has been liberated from any kind of restraint by the 1960s culture of. maximal sexual liberation and and sex, premarital sex whenever you want it. So that that's a good sign. Other than that though, the the underlying incident which we can discuss is completely squalid and and depressing and I you know that parents are paying God knows what the Cornell tuition is, it's probably like eighty thousand, ninety thousand to have their children go and and simply engage in these orgy fests of drugs ketamine and and and drinking blotto instead of using their time there productively to actually fill some knowledge into their empty noggins is is status quo in in the university scene today but but very discouraging
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, I I suspect that everybody has the obvious intuition that the conduct here is just awful, but yet we are we're all sort of in a liberal prison where the only way we can interpret right and wrong is through the lens of consent. And so we're cha everybody's channeling this impulse that, like, yes, people should not be engaged in ketamine fueled orgies on college campus and then translating it only into the question of of whether or not there's consensual there's consent to the drug fueled orgies on college campuses. And it seems like The actual correct answer to this is there should be no drug field orgies on college campuses, whether or not the participants consent to that or not.
Heather: Absolutely. And you know, we had norms of female modesty and I'm gonna use an extremely dangerous word, chastity, God forbid, for good reason, because the male libido is voracious and it is immoral, amoral, you know, mows down whatever is in its way and marriage, the norm of marriage of no sex until you're married married, and and females being gatekeepers literally to their own physical body, was a way of putting that libido in check and taming it, redirecting it towards noble ends of aspiration and accomplishment so that you could actually woo a female to be willing to have intercourse with you as opposed to having her drink herself blood. It has happened here with the so-called Jane Doe, and I hope that her name is soon released, given that the males are being crucified with their males names being released. Anyway, Jane Doe drinks 10, 10 drinks. before even showing up at the fraternity and then proceeds to have a beer there and proceeds to take ketamine. This is all voluntary. and she is walking in deliberately to a sex scene. The males don't have to do anything. You know, it's it's completely agreeable to everybody. And that when you have that, you're gonna see males behaving boorishly, but to be perfectly honest, there is sort of a A meme around here in in conservative circles that these males are evil. you know, they certainly should not be criminally prosecuted. That would be outrageous. They should not be held liable monetarily, but they committed some horrible sin here. Frankly, I'm sorry. To me, this looks like it was. instigated throughout by the female. And again, given male nature, if it's not forced to restrain itself, I'm frankly not surprised and I'm not all that horrified by what happened here from the male perspective. But that that I know puts me way out into the outer reaches of a strange blend of morality and amorality.
Will Chamberlain: So I d I a hundred percent agree with you on the question of, you know, I think the were the right wing movement needs to go to the wall for these young men and not let what happened to Derek Chauvin happen to these young men. I see a railroad incoming where, I mean, obviously Kathy Hokel has appointed Letitia James, who had already stated that she believes that the the you know the the kids are guilty. So I think we should be absolutely going to wall for these boys to make sure they have our the most robust legal defense possible. we didn't for Chauvin. I mean, I I I had a different guest on here who will wrote a whole book about the Derek Chauvin trial. And what one of the, you know, remarkable things you forget it was that there was a slew of pro bono legal representation that came in behind the prosecutors of all things. And Shoven only had the one defense lawyer and as a result missed a bunch of opportunities in that case. That shouldn't happen here. But I I I sort of wonder, you know, while I am I am sympathetic to the idea that under current law these boys are not liable and should not be held liable in any way. I was thinking about fixes to this problem because I'm a lawyer and I want to figure out ways to use the law to fix things. And what I I was reading about older torts, and one of them was the tort of seduction, which is the it's an older concept, more turn of the century type stuff. But the the basic idea is that the father of a an unmarried woman had a property interest in her daughter's chastity and therefore would have the right to sue a a young man if he seduced her daughter. And I was actually thinking to myself, maybe this is, you know, the actual correct moral intuition here, which is that indeed men do need to be restrained, but perhaps they should be affirmatively and transparently restrained by the law, saying that we have a tort on the books that says you will be civilly liable if you engage in conduct like this to the father of the of the woman that you sleep with. I I that seems reasonable to me. I don't know if that seems reasonable to you.
Heather: Yes, but I don't see that applying to this fact situation. but
Will Chamberlain: Yeah.
Heather: let's first note that what's going on here either through your legal theory or in the broader left wing discourse is that we are making males the guardians of female well being and assuming that the female has no capacity to say no to determine her own fate. And I'm willing to live with that as if we can just be honest about it and say females are too dopey to be able to protect themselves and they do need males to act chival with a is chivalry. you know, to say I will restrain myself because I can't trust the female. But in this case, even if we do accept that males owe a duty of of sort of property rights to the father, which is interesting, and it certainly was the case that chastity was a commodity on the marriage market and understandably in this case it simply does not apply she walked into the Frat House with the intention of meeting the first defendant. And I don't remember who proposed what first that they have sex, but she was certainly totally amenable to that. And then the set we have a threesome, she's amenable to that. All this is being asked of her. She assents constantly. so I don't see any seduction here. She's not obviously a and and certainly she's not a a a wilting flower, and I doubt whether she lost her chastity this night. she seems way too comfortable with the the sex act. maybe
Will Chamberlain: I I think that's a fair point. You know, I think that even even under my legal theory, you are quite right that it's not clear there would be civil liability. So let's let's I I doubt that the anybody's gonna agree with me on this bringing back chastity as a tort thing. but I actually have another interesting, what probably more practical idea, relatively more practical, which is you know, we have this massive Title IX infrastructure that you've written about, like the entire the the campus rape industry and the tribunals and the kangaroo courts. there's one option, which is to simply get rid of it outright and perhaps we still do that. But the intuition I have is if you know the Department of Education is able to pose these incredible restrictions on these universities, then that's also a lever with which you could then impose what actually should be the rules on these universities. Like you you you could put impose preemptive regulations that say every university in the country needs to be like Liberty University. you know, single sex storms, no drugs, harsh rules. you could basically impose top down from the federal government the rule sets that work at like Thomas Aquinas and Liberty in Hillsdale, our best Christian colleges. I don't know what you think about that.
Heather: Have no objection in theory to those being the rules,
Will Chamberlain: Mm-hmm.
Heather: especially today when there the sort of social informal stigma against grotesquely promiscuous sex has been wiped out by radical feminism. but I'm I'm ambivalent about it being a federal mandate, and it's not because I'm some radical libertarian, but and this is a dilemma in all of the university reform, the campus reform that the Trump administration is trying to do. he's strengthening the precedent for the left to take over universities again and it's not as if he's doing anything that is so new because the left has been imposing its mandates, but doing it when we do it it it strengthens the precedent and it will make it all the more likely that the left takes the power and runs with it. So I don't know. you could have, you can imagine, you know, our solution is going to be that every male needs to be have 60 hours a week of sexual harassment training, that that's the way we're going to be combating this problem. So I I don't know. And then one can also ask What's the chicken and what's the egg? What's the cause and what's the effect? You say they work at rules like this work at Liberty and Hillsdale, but would they work elsewhere? Again, I'm I'm ambivalent. I'd I'd have to think it through. I think there's been real benefits, but there's also risks and costs. Nevertheless, that should be the ideal. And and we did have, you know, there were rules like this. We forget that. there were rules against males in a female dorm before. So to that extent you're absolutely correct. And there was punishment and rules against drinking, and the and the colleges just threw up their hands in the 60s when you had these entitled, affluent, spoiled, narcissistic students deciding that they were going to liberate society, but certainly themselves from. Norms of sexual restraint and propriety. And the colleges made a little feeble effort initially, maybe to push back, but then opened it wide up. And so now you have the insane situation of college-sponsored sex weeks and you know instruction being handed out for. how to use dental dams and and maximizing your orgasm at the same time that you have we at least we used to have the take back the night rallies and the one could say the prudishness of the campus rape hysteria that tries to make females into victims of these awful male males when they've been completely complicitous in it. As I say at this point, colleges are absolutely participants in the anti-academic, anti-scholarly bacchanal that goes on on a regular basis.
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, some of my intellectual project has always been a bit I have a deep hostility to the university system, and I think most conservatives should and rightfully do. and perhaps I think this is an unexplored lever to really, you know, do some real damage to the university system and make them less appealing or less appealing to the sort of people who aren't in there to be interested in knowledge. which I think might be a positive thing. ahead.
Heather: it's sort of everybody except for maybe the the most rigorous tech, but I mean they would say yeah, they're not really into the knowledge, so you're absolutely right.
Will Chamberlain: So I I wanted to I wanted to explore a little more in detail because, you know, you've written a a ton about this for a very long time. And in particular, I want to explore more detail like the what changed in the university system in the 60s. Like, I mean, I know you you just talked about they, you know, they just kind of threw up their hands at at liberation, but was this just like a standard cultural thing and basically all universities had normal rules about this stuff, and then they just kind of folded in the face of. the sexual liberation movement of the sixties.
Heather: Yeah, I again there used to be very strict rules against males coming into a female dorm or vice versa, and you would have sign in sheets, and there was an attempt by the university to act in the the legal phrases you know in loco parentis that the parents are are absent and so the university is going to take over. The role of parent in trying to demand responsible behavior from students and to protect females against the male libido, which is something that needs to be done either formally or informally. But then students started complaining: well, why, you know, why should you keep males out of the dorms and They demanded that there be access, no no chaperones, no sign-ins. And and I remember I was in college in the 70s. making a demand just became an end in itself. So if there was any remaining shred of reality that that recognized male-female differences, that had to go. And so you had mixed-sex dorms, and I remember like the bathrooms, we we had to get rid of single-sex bathrooms. Which is absurd, as if females are on average happy about having some naked guy in the shower next to them. all of this is obviously a a long harbinger of what is happening with the t unbelievable trans movement, which is the same thing that we should subject young girls to having males in their in the private spaces. but yeah, the universities they caved and then the administration became populated with products of the counterculture revolution that were not at all inclined to push back but believed you know that students should be liberated and but but it then gave rise to another weird Paradox of the university system with regards to sex, which is at the same time that the universities are handing out brochures on maximizing orgasm, you have these highly technical rules for deciding what is consent and what is not, and this whole bureaucracy to oversee it, as if this is not some catonic. you know, primeval impulse and then you you overlay it with rules as complex as something one might come across in Florence Renaissance Italy for regulating contracts and and you know credit lines and promissory notes. so the the unit it's just bizarre. You have you have this anything goes ethic Overseen by an extraordinarily complicated bureaucracy.
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, it strikes me that there's like
Heather: That's quite a bit.
Will Chamberlain: the combination of the American impulse towards like maximum liberation and also maximum lawyering going on there, right? Like so people are, you know, maximally free to
Heather: Yeah.
Will Chamberlain: do what they want. But there is whenever you have lawyers involved with anything, you get a bias towards tribunals and judging because that's what lawyers know. like what's
Heather: And and in the university the bias is towards bureaucracy. So there's just this
Will Chamberlain: Mm, that too.
Heather: massive Title IX bureaucracy and they all created their the universities created these campus rape hotlines and crisis centers. And as I wrote in my early and and present takedown of the campus rape hoax in two thousand eight in City Journal, Nobody calls. You know, they they set up this whole rape apparatus thinking, one in four women are are violated sexually assaulted in their college careers. So we need to create, you know, a safe space for them and they'll all be calling. And nothing they never call and and you you the members of the campus rape bureaucracy go around talking to students, trying to get them to use our rape center, but they're very sad because They just aren't getting the clients because fortunately there's a a certain common sense still existing in the students. It turns out the government classifies them as rape victims based on some very shoddy methodology. And when you ask the students who the government or the The the social science sex researchers classify as rape victims. When you ask the actual victims, were you raped? They say, No, I wasn't. so that's part of the reason why these rape bureaucracies are just not used, because there still is a shred of common sense where females, unlike, well, Jane Doe in this Cornell case, initially she was pretty accurate about what happened and surprisingly willing to take responsibility. She said in many communications, you know, none of this was a crime in her communications with her sex partners afterwards. and you know nothing you guys did was criminal. So she even she initially was was pretty honest with herself and it was only you know when she started feeling shame as she should that was a very valid response that she decides to take advantage of the massive victim ideology that is there for the you know inviting every female to to embrace
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, she would deserve credit for her candor had she not filed that that lawsuit and decided to, you know, go back on all that. I'm actually of the of the opinion that there, you know, maybe something for federal authorities to do here is to sort of although I don't know they'd have jurisdiction, but it's to keep an eye on when she actually gets in court and decides to make some statements under oath and then to go after her for making false sworn statements because she made a sworn statement that exonerated these young men. quite a while back. Yeah, I still I I lean towards the intuition that th this should all, you know, be burned to the ground, that all these people need to be need to find productive employment instead of sitting around with these ridiculous campus rape tribunals. all right. So if if not my idea, which is use the existing infrastructure to impose Liberty, university and Aquinas style rules on all the all the universities, which I think you should you should give more thought to, because I don't think your precedent argument is very strong. Remember, Democrats do unprecedented things all the time. So I think that objection is not not the strongest one. but if not that, then what what would your best idea be to sort of like from a policy perspective to to do something about this?
Heather: I'm better at the critique, which is a different way of thinking than actually
Will Chamberlain: Fair enough.
Heather: believing and having the optimism to believe in in policy and coming up with solutions. You have to be a little credulous because I having written about social decline for 30, 40 years now. There's not a single sane policy solution that hasn't been proposed for the last 50 years and none of it has made a damn bit of difference as far as I can tell. So I guess I'm I I leave that to others. I will just say that we need to continue shaming the utter deception that's going on here and you know, trying to blow the whistle on this massive victim complex that is trying to argue a falsehood about Western civilization, which is that it is a patriarchy, that it is a rape culture that's preposterous. females and and the you know, the other thing that is definitely noticeable here: if this was a rape culture on campuses, why do females keep beating down the doors to get into campuses? The the female population at Cornell. has gone up over the last ten years or twenty years from a little under fifty percent to now close to fifty four percent because they all want to get into college, a co ed college. and you know why do they keep trooping into these frat houses that are we're told are Hotbeds of sexual assault. And there's two possibilities. One, narrative that we live in this patriarchy and that colleges are are like scenes of rape that at a at a rate that is unthinkable. You know, one in the claimed one in four statistics, 25% rate of the the second most serious felony that exists is out of this world. Detroit, you put in all four violent felonies. Its crime rate is 2.4 Per a hundred K, we're claiming twenty-five percent a hundred K. That's unthinkable. I mean, there's no society that has that degree of a rape rate, not even African tribal wars when they're using rape as a as a tool of war. so why are why are students still going in? Why are they still going to the frat houses these females? Two so two two s explanations. One, it doesn't exist. This whole thing is a fiction. Number two, students girls are too idiotic To protect themselves and stay out of the frat house in if it really is this maelstrom of sexual assault, in which case they shouldn't be in college. And I'm happy to live with that explanation as well.
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, no, I think that's a hundred percent right. I think that, you know, I remember you've made that point in in r in your writing as well, that like if if indeed the twenty-five percent statistic was right, then you know, parents would be keeping their kids from these places at all costs. But every everybody knows that statistic is wrong and it's just an obvious revealed preference that we we know. But you know, I think one thing this incident has highlighted in the sense that I think conservatives have been so focused on debunking that particular myth, right? The rape culture myth, that they haven't spent their time Criticizing the Bacchanal reality of colleges. You know, I I think that that's that's what this reveals because we can all look at this and see, okay, obviously this is a false accusation. Obviously, these kids should not be prosecuted. But like, what on earth? You know, wait a second, at Cornell University, inside the frat house, affiliated with the university, there are there's a drug and kedominorgy. And what what happened as a result of that? Like you could make a pretty compelling argument that the fraternity should have. Should have been shut down just based on you had a drug and ketamine orgy outside of a consent, and yet it wasn't.
Heather: at this point, I guess I don't even know if anybody is ever, if there's any rules against drug use on campus. And I don't know if Fratz or they're sort of like they've got their own law, what sort of jurisdiction universities have over them. But I I completely agree. And and there needs to be a much broader discourse that is right now, you know, just marginal among Catholics or whatever about as I said. in the beginning about female modesty, if not chastity, that that's the best way to protect yourself if you really think that you know this is a a rape culture. Don't get in bed with the guy and there are better things that you can be doing with your time. so I I you know and I I would love to know the sources of this come from what kind of majors? I wonder if the people doing very difficult STEM fields are participating in this as well. They may be, I don't know. But yeah, this is not initially why people thought colleges should exist, which is to be a place of of maximal just sexual perversion. I mean it is. This is perversion that was going on, but We have two sets of of moral standards, you know, we are completely hysterical about so-called racism in one direction. Nobody objects to anti-white black racism, but if anybody can be accused of anti-black racism, it's like the most serious sin that you can engage in if you're white and say something that is viewed as racist about black crime. At the same time, we are totally amoral when it comes to things that are very fundamentally necessary to maintain a stable society. So it's a it's not as if I think there's a conservative line, which is that we're all relativistic and we've thrown aside any moral code. That's not true. We have simply moved it from what it used to be focused on, which was decisions about personal behavior, about sexual behavior, about honor, about honesty, about nobility. That's all out the window. And then we are very Puritan and Draconian about things that violate the code of silence with regards to different disparities in populations and anything that can be regarded as a product of the evil Western civilization of of of racism and oppression and colonialism and sexism, etcetera.
Will Chamberlain: Yeah, it strikes me that concern is of just, I mean, this is a product of us being in a defensive crouch on any number of issues, right? So this is an example of us being in a defensive crouch where we're defending against the kangaroo courts, but we're not making similar demands of the universities to adhere to a different moral code, a w a more appropriate one. we're playing defense on racism where we, you know, are saying, No, no, no, no, no, we're not racist, rather than saying you are affirmatively racist towards white people. I mean I just had a whole fight actually with Sarah Huckabee Sanders over that ridiculous ad she put out where she was, you know, using a a white male as like the emblematic loser on SNA welfare benefits, which is just sort of, you know, you're a Republican, like why are you insulting your own voters? And especially in such a way that is not representative of of the actual facts on the ground. but in just in any number of cases, I feel like we're in a defensive crouch. And I guess to get back to the subject here, I feel like what you've You you lay out another interesting option, which is if we're, you know, trying to, you know, put the universities on a little bit of a vice. On the one hand, we can put pressure on them because they've allowed their campuses to become Bacchanals. That's an obvious lever of pressure. The other is we do it. I know that the Trump administration announced that it's cutting off or it's gonna cut off aid for bad majors or is something along those lines. Like it's not gonna subsidize the federal student loans for, you know, X studies. ex science, right? If you call something a science, it's not a science. If you call studies, it's not studying anything. and then we can actually put real pressure on the universities and and get them to, you know, return to a probably much less popular but much more virtuous institution.
Heather: But again, you know, I agree with the goals completely of what the Trump administration is doing. They their intuitions about what constitutes an insult to academic activity and and is the most absurd simulacrum of scholarship and knowledge. They're absolutely right. But again, I and I know you say that the left will already do it and then will do it again, and you're absolutely right. Nevertheless, I just think about putting that power in the opposite hands, which is gonna happen, and Democrats starting deciding to shut down constitutional studies or or history that is seen as too patriotic, military history, and and saying no, you don't have an a a large enough quotient here of recognizing the victims of of the West and so we want a curriculum or a school bureaucracy that is making sure that students really don't graduate without having been a hundred and fifty percent marinated in left wing ideology. and I do not have an answer to this. I grapple with it all the time, which is worse Backing off on federal power and hoping that somehow private means will take care of it, or saying we have power now, let's just use it to the max and and see what happens. And you know, right, after the October Hamas attacks in Israel, there were efforts by alumni to Correct their schools. There was a whole group of alumni from Morton Business School at UPenn and UPenn more generally that tried to get a boycott of Mark Rowan and Ross Stevens trying to boycott alumni giving, and they even composed a very impressive new constitution for the University of Pennsylvania that would put the emphasis on real knowledge and not fake all the fake sciences that you referred to and freedom of speech. But I think knowledge is the most important thing that we don't talk about. And it it got a lot of attention initially, but to be perfectly honest, I think it may just have run out of steam because most alumni are either affirmatively left. wing and believe in the identity politics or are ignorant and they think the university is the same as when they attended it, although it was probably already pretty left wing. It's been left wing for a very long time. And they just want the ego of giving a lot of money, getting their names on on buildings. So the private solution of let the Private actors, the alumni take care of this. That doesn't seem to have worked all that well either. one could say, well, there's been these little efforts of we're gonna beef up the anti-Semitism training at Harvard and whatnot, and I think that's pretty bogus as well. so this gets into more complicated matters that we don't shouldn't get into. But I'm just saying I'm arguing against myself, which is that I can't prove that a non-governmental solution will cure the nauseating anti scholastic illness that has taken over so much of our universities today.
Will Chamberlain: I'll I'll beef up your argument a little bit. I think you I think you have a very good point on at least subject matter in terms of like t the government discriminating against subject matter because liberals really haven't done too much of that. And so in a world reopen that, that actually could lead to a reciprocal response that I think would be more than what we would see in the status quo. Don't I don't think that that works as well with the idea of imposing again the sort of Christian style rules on everybody because they've already gone to the max on the insane. full sexual liberation and full kangaroo court things. So I don't know I don't know what more they would do in response to us taking any action here. I
Heather: It's hilarious to think about, you know, it would just be such a a cold shower on these people if they actually the students, you know, to come up against these rules. So I I like the idea. It's it's very fun to think about. but
Will Chamberlain: Right, because like what I mean, what are they gonna say? And there's a whole there's already the existing like pre not precedent, but there's the existing legal rationale and legal infrastructure to do stuff like this. Like you just say, you know, for the same reason that the Department of Education could go and say, Well, you need to put all these rules in place to deal with rape, blah, blah, blah. We can say you need to put this rule in place to deal with rape. And the rule just happens to be single sex dorms. And I'm not sure what your answer to that is if or and how you would challenge maybe you you'd have some argument that it's just like an overbroad regulation and you go for like arbitrary and capricious or something. But I I don't see much else other than that.
Heather: Now the other issue here is is the the Greek system and I really I shouldn't be speaking about it because I have no connection to it. and I have to say I'm not I don't have an intuitive sense of identification with it. I think it proved its worth during the year of of pro Hamas frenzy on college campuses with these idiots demonstrating against their own interests. You know, I I attended one of the major protests at at Columbia University in New York as if as if you know the the Hamas fighters in in Gaza are going to be thrilled about having queer ideology in favor of them and wouldn't, you know, throw them off of of buildings. but I've lost my train of thought. I know you can
Will Chamberlain: that's fine. I've lost my train of thought and I've I've definitely run through my qu list of questions.
Heather: No, you were ask
Will Chamberlain: Well we we've we've covered plenty of ground, I think. and I'll have to I I'm looking forward to thinking hard more harder about how to wield the power of the state against the universities. That's my primary project here. But anyway, Heather McDonald, thank you so much for joining Counterweight. and if you've gotten to the end
Heather: Thank you, Will. you.
Will Chamberlain: of this, then Clearly, we're doing something right. So we're a new podcast. Please go ahead, like and subscribe. and we will see you next time.
