Comments from a minority of students in a television performance class I taught provided the pretext for administrators at the University of Cincinnati to use a Title IX investigation as a weapon against me. The students didn’t like the standards I expected them to work up to, nor did they wish to take on the responsibilities of what it means to produce a professional news program for air. This was, in fact, the first television performance-related course ever taught in the Department of Journalism at the University of Cincinnati. And no course ever had a regular newscast on local cable—both were firsts. The students’ grievances opened the door for a college administrator and a former subordinate of mine (with whom I was co-teaching the class)—both of whom had axes to grind against me—to manipulate the situation to their advantage by encouraging the Title IX Office to get involved.

If you’re unfamiliar with Title IX, it’s the part of federal law that defines sexual harassment in higher education. Quoted here:

• An employee of the University conditioning the provision of an aid, benefit, or service of the University on an individual’s participation in unwelcome sexual conduct;
• Unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the University’s education program or activity; or
• Sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, or stalking.

The allegations made against me were: adjusting a lapel microphone on a student during class (after asking permission); moving a piece of hair off a student’s shoulder before filming (after asking permission); texting students about their class assignments; texting students to meet outside of class to discuss their career plans and possible ways they could help future students in the program; pointing a camera down toward a student’s covered legs to record an audio-only track (which is a demonstrably false allegation as video from the camera in question shows); commenting on how well students looked in their professional pictures taken for class; requiring students to look professional in their on-camera appearance; discussing assumptions people can make about appearances in photographs; asking about student hobbies and free time as a way to generate story ideas for their assignments; working with students in my office on edits to their recorded stories; and inviting students to attend a premiere of a documentary I produced to be shown at a major television station event in New York City.

A plain reading of the statute and the allegations should make clear to any impartial and reasonable person that none of these constitutes sexual harassment. There was no sexual content conveyed in any of the actions outlined in the allegations. And, critically, not one single student filed a complaint against me. Yet the university commenced with a Title IX investigation anyway—in the absence of actual complainants and without suspending me from campus or otherwise sanctioning me in the short term while it conducted its investigation.

Note that the university then allowed me into the classroom in the fall of 2024 to teach the same course (comprised entirely of women) from which the original witness allegations arose—with no instruction about changing any of the course components or means of content delivery. How justified was this investigation if the university was not even bothered enough by the allegations to instruct me how it wanted this course taught while conducting its Title IX investigation?

Disgusted and depressed by the entire situation, I left the university on my own volition for a dream job in television news before submitting to a hearing that I suspected was manipulated to find against me (after all, why bring such bogus allegations to a formal hearing in the first place?). I was not fired or in any way sanctioned by the university.

The investigation was a hit job on my career from start to finish, and the latest example of college administrators weaponizing Title IX to go after faculty they do not like.

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