It is ironic that a Berkeley Ph.D. who specializes in helping the homeless and runs a school of social work should incur the enmity of the Left but that is exactly what happened when Will Rainford offered his observations on one of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers.
On his own time, Will Rainford, then dean of the National Catholic School of Social Service at Catholic University of America tweeted, “Swetnick is 55 y/o. Kavanaugh is 52 y/o. Since when do senior girls hang with freshmen boys? If it happened when Kavanaugh was a senior, Swetnick was an adult drinking with&by her admission, having sex with underage boys. In another universe, he would be victim & she the perp!” The Washington Post and many other publications displayed the tweet on an account that has since been taken down.
You can guess what happened next. Students protested and the president of CUA suspended Rainford, despite the apology he offered.
“Over the past few days I have heard from numerous professors, alumni, and students of the National Catholic School of Social Service who are concerned with a series of tweets written by Dean Will Rainford,” CUA president John Garvey wrote on September 28, 2018. “The tweets called into question the validity of some accusations of sexual assault made against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.”
“Of deepest concern to me is that they demonstrated a lack of sensitivity to the victim.”
There are several other ironies connected with this tale. Of course, one is that an academic institution that prizes independence of thought should aim to discipline someone who exercises it, and off the clock, no less.
But the crowning irony may be that shortly after the suspension, the lady in question, Julie Swetnick, started to walk back her story, or at least her certainty that President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee was a key villain in the piece.
“I cannot specifically say that he was one of the ones who assaulted me,” she said on the Today show. “But before this happened to me, at that party, I saw Brett Kavanaugh there. I saw Mark Judge there. And they were hanging about the area where I started to feel disoriented and where the room was, and where the other boys were hanging out. And laughing. I could hear them laughing and laughing.” The Daily Caller captured the video.
Is it just possible that it is the university that owes Rainford an apology?
