Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet is speaking out against the university's new campus sexual assault policies, calling the federal government’s treatment of college campuses “madness.”

Last week, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found Harvard's Law School in violation of Title IX, the 1972 Education Amendments provision now being used to require colleges to adjudicate sexual assault outside the criminal courts. OCR determined that Harvard Law had essentially been providing accused students too much due process, and the school adopted new policies to rectify that supposed error.

“The federal government’s decision that Harvard Law School violated Title IX represents nothing more than the government’s flawed view of Title IX law,” Bartholet wrote in an e-mail to the Wall Street Journal’s law blog.

“[OCR], which issued the decision, is not the ultimate decision-maker on law. The courts are responsible for interpreting the law,” Bartholet continued. “And I trust that the courts will eventually reject the federal government’s current views.”

Bartholet added that courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have to date recognized due process rights for the accuser as well as the accused in sexual assault cases.

“I believe that history will demonstrate the federal government’s position to be wrong, that our society will look back on this time as a moment of madness, and that Harvard University will be deeply shamed at the role it played in simply caving to the government’s position,” Bartholet concluded.

Following OCR’s determination, Harvard Law will lower the burden of proof to the “preponderance of evidence” standard. This means that faculty adjudicating a claim of sexual assault will only need to be 50.01 percent sure the accuser is telling the truth in order to brand the accused a rapist for life.

Harvard Law will also be required to reopen all sexual harassment and sexual assault accusations made in the previous two school years — meaning students who had previously been acquitted will now be retried in an effort to find more of them guilty.

And if you think that’s not what will happen, consider the current climate surrounding campus sexual assault, in which the goal is to find students guilty — not to conduct a fair, fact-based process that respects the rights of all involved. Why else would the school be compelled to reopen past cases, and not merely to apply new policies going forward?