Bill Donohue comments on remarks made on May 1 by Secretary of State John Kerry:

Secretary Kerry congratulated the U.S. Embassy staff in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for promoting “a universal message about the rights of people to be free, about democracy, about the ability of people to be able to choose their government and not be oppressed when they speak out or say something.” He should have stopped there. Here is what he said next:

“This is a time here in Africa where there are a number of different cross-currents of modernity that are coming together to make things even more challenging. Some people believe that people ought to be able to only do what they say they ought to do, or to believe what they say they ought to believe, or to live by their interpretation of something that was written down a thousand plus, two thousand years ago. That’s not the way I think most people want to live.”

The Ten Commandments are the moral edifice upon which Western civilization was built. It makes absolute prohibitions on a range of issues. Was Kerry aiming his remarks at the Ten Commandments? Or was he taking issue with the teachings of Jesus as found in the New Testament? Or were his remarks targeted at the Koran, the religious text of Islam?

One thing we know for sure: Christians are being beaten, raped, and murdered in many parts of Africa, and the ones who are committing these crimes are invoking Islam as their justification. While there is much dispute about the extent to which these barbarians are distorting, or perfecting, Islam, there should be no ambiguity about who the persecutors are.

Secretary Kerry needs to explain himself.

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Bill Donohue comments on efforts by the Obama administration to curb sexual assault on college campuses:

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama established a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. We commend him for that, but more needs to be done. Colleges and universities need to get up to speed with the progress made by the Catholic Church in combating sexual assault. Moreover, public officials, beginning with President Obama, should give voice to this idea.

Sexual harassment and assault is addressed under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. So far this fiscal year, 30 such complaints have been filed with the Department of Education; this matches the total number filed in all of fiscal 2013. Now the Education Department has released the names of 55 colleges and universities where a complaint has been registered.

Title IX is antiquated, and does not meet the test that Catholic institutions have established. To be sure, it calls for institutions of higher education to take complaints of sexual harassment and assault seriously—immediate action is mandated, including an investigation—but it does not require colleges and universities to notify law enforcement. It’s worse than that. As we learned last week, Columbia University administrators recently informed students who filed sexual assault claims that they are not allowed to discuss their cases in public.

In other words, not only are colleges and universities not required to call the cops when they get a credible accusation, they are allowed to silence the accusers. That all of this is happening in institutions where sexism is routinely denounced and free speech is heralded makes it even more disgusting.

It’s time the White House called on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to instruct college presidents on how to check this problem.