In one corner, Jed Rubenfeld, a professor of criminal law at Yale Law School, formerly of the United States Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York.

In another corner, the New York Times, the paper of record, the Grey Lady herself.

And in between, every person who read this bizarre and absurdly irresponsible op-ed, entitled “Mishandling Rape.”  Almost every “fact” alleged in the piece is either false, baseless or grossly misleading.  At the same time, Rubenfeld’s “fixes” cover nearly every conceivable base from claiming rapists almost always get away with it while falsely accused rapists are wrongfully convicted.

OUR strategy for dealing with rape on college campuses has failed abysmally. Female students are raped in appalling numbers, and their rapists almost invariably go free. Forced by the federal government, colleges have now gotten into the business of conducting rape trials, but they are not competent to handle this job. They are simultaneously failing to punish rapists adequately and branding students sexual assailants when no sexual assault occurred.

It’s not that he doesn’t posit many of the concerns I’ve expressed here, and solutions similarly proposed, but that he does so while simultaneously arguing out of every side of his mouth, plus a few other bodily orifices.

Moreover, sexual assault on campus should mean what it means in the outside world and in courts of law. Otherwise, the concept of sexual assault is trivialized, casting doubt on students courageous enough to report an assault.

The college hearing process could then be integrated with law enforcement. The new university procedures offer college rape victims an appealing alternative to filing a complaint with the police. According to a recent New York Times article, a “great majority” of college students now choose to report incidents of assault to their school, not the police, because of anonymity and other perceived advantages.

 * * *

But colleges can’t just leave sexual assault victims to the criminal justice system, in part because most victims are so reluctant to report assaults to the police. That is why integrating college rape hearings with law enforcement is critical. New training for the police and prosecutors is essential, too. Special law enforcement liaison officers who know how to respectfully receive and vigorously act on sexual assault complaints should be present in every college town. They should be at every college sexual assault hearing. The rights of the accused have to be protected, but whenever there is evidence of a rape on a college campus, the police need to know.

Everything possible should be done to encourage victims to participate in a criminal investigation; if students make a formal complaint of rape to their school, the college should provide them with a lawyer to go with them to the police, help them report the crime and ensure they are treated properly. Meanwhile, the hearing process should be put in the hands of trained investigatory personnel and people with criminal law experience.

There doesn’t appear to any side, any point, any statistic, any definition, that Rubenfeld doesn’t assert, then immediately contradict, then reassert and contradict again.  Raise the standard of proof in college tribunals, but put law enforcement in the room to use the defendant’s statements (which would otherwise be subject to Fifth Amendment protection) for secondary prosecutions? WTF?

While the op-ed is so inherently flawed as to make it impossible to deconstruct in any critical fashion, as it would require a line-by-line dissection to make even the slightest sense of this pseudo-intellectual botch, it does raise one overarching question: How could the New York Times have published this piece of garbage?

So who loses the fight?  That’s easy. Anyone who reads this piece of crap.

Regardless of whether some of his fixes are right or wrong, it is inexcusable to publish an op-ed like this.  The New York Times should be ashamed of itself. Rubenfeld and Yale Law as well, but then, based upon this op-ed, they’re utterly shameless.

Update: As if to add the exclamation point to this post, many comments to this op-ed “agree” with the Rubenfeld, though they support exact opposite positions. That’s really bad.

Update 2:  At the Guardian, Jessica Valenti rips Rubenfeld for not doing

more than simply not[ing] that women are attacked “in appalling numbers” and colleges mishandle rape cases.

Instead, what followed that barest of acknowledgements of the epidemic of rape – on the front cover of the Times’ Sunday Review section, ostensibly some lingering bastion of “thought leadership” – was misinformation, cherry-picked research and a series of inflammatory, baseless arguments.

That’s the problem of trying to be all things to all people: you can end up nothing to no one.  But Rubenfeld was not without his fans, including Robby Soave at Reason, who called this op-ed “thoughtful,” though he mostly writes to criticize  Valenti, who calls anyone who doesn’t parrot her views a “rape apologist.”  And David Bernstein at Volokh calls Rubenfeld’s op-ed “thoughtful” as well, though he too gives no reason for it.

Update 3:  75 Yale law students, determined to prove that Harvard Law Students are not alone in their blind “passion,” have issued a letter to Rubenfeld as related in this Huff Post piece.

Julie Veroff, a third-year law student, told The Huffington Post that she signed the letter in part because she was especially bothered by Rubenfeld’s “dismissive treatment” of sexual autonomy and affirmative consent.

“He suggests that the notion that sexual intimacy should be voluntarily and affirmatively agreed to by both parties is, at best, an idealized, unattainable ideal, and at worst, a destructive boogeyman,” Veroff told HuffPost in an email. “But in fact, it is a basic right.”

I don’t think “fact” or “right” means what you think it does. You ought to ask Yale for your money back. Sheesh.