In Defense of Georgetown Prep, 'Men for Others' and Due Process

In the face of recent and ongoing public criticism of my alma mater, Georgetown Preparatory School, I cannot in good conscience remain silent.

Having testified before Congress multiple times as a constitutional due process expert, and having both served as a Senate-confirmed inspector general and authored “The Inspector General Handbook” (2013), I am the first to reserve judgment on unproven allegations.

On the other hand, the ongoing public allegations against Georgetown Prep — in the context of the upcoming Senate confirmation vote on Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy — warrant an immediate public response by someone with personal knowledge of Georgetown Prep.

A Washington Post “story” over the past weekend is subtitled: “The Post’s Greg Jaffe says misogyny ran deep at elite D.C. boys’ schools like his and Bret Kavanaugh’s.” The article is based upon what the author describes as what “Christine Blasey Ford said in The Washington Post that Kavanaugh had drunkenly pinned her on her back and groped her when he was a high school junior” — at Georgetown Prep more than 30 years ago.

Whatever Mr. Jaffe remembers from his own “elite D.C. boys’ school,” his description that “misogyny ran deep” describes neither the Georgetown Prep I experienced as a student in the 1970’s nor the Georgetown Prep to which I sent five of my six sons between 1995 and 2015.

Of course, no respectable school in America officially promotes misogyny. What Mr. Jaffe’s article suggests, instead, is that, “the same misogynistic culture” that he recalls from his own Montgomery County, Maryland, all-boys prep school also “ran deep” at Georgetown Prep.

Although I cannot speak from experience about Mr. Jaffe’s school, the Georgetown Prep I know from my own student experience in the 1970’s and as a Georgetown Prep father over two decades, misogyny did not and does not “run deep.” To the contrary, the Georgetown Prep I know deeply inculcates into all of its students two mottos attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder the Society of Jesus, a.k.a. the Jesuits, both of which are antithetical to misogyny: “Men for Others” and “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” (“for the greater glory of God”).

None of my five sons who attended Georgetown Prep ever hinted at anything remotely misogynistic. As was I in the 1970’s, each of my five sons who attended Georgetown Prep was taught to respect all “others,” including other men and women. That respect is at the very core of who we are: “Men for others,” serving others “for the greater glory of God.”

Today, according to one Catholic priest, whose homily is reprinted in Lifesitenews.com, “We aren't just simply living in days that are evil, we are living in the days that Isaiah spoke about, the days when they will call evil good and good evil. And we have been brainwashed into thinking that evil things are okay, they're not.”

Misogyny and sexual assault are both evil things.

Regarding the sexual assault allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, all Americans are, of course, entitled to the presumption of innocence unless and until proven guilty. According to recent guidance from our Supreme Court, all Americans are also entitled by our Constitution to procedural due process:

“For more than a century the central meaning of procedural due process has been clear: Parties whose rights are to be affected are entitled to be heard; and in order that they may enjoy that right they must first be notified. It is equally fundamental that the right to notice and an opportunity to be heard must be granted at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner. These essential constitutional promises may not be eroded.” (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 533 (2004) (internal quotes and cites omitted)).

Whatever comes of the sexual assault allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, based on what allegedly occurred when he was a student at Georgetown Prep in the 1980’s, I am not aware any credible evidence that “misogyny ran deep” at Georgetown Prep, not during my time there in the 1970’s, not during Brett Kavanaugh’s time there in the 1980’s, and not during my five sons’ time over two decades starting in 1995.

All graduates of Georgetown Prep, whether or not they are up for Senate confirmation, should not by stigmatized with unproven allegations of misogyny or sexual assault without “notice and an opportunity to be heard . . . at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner. These essential constitutional promises may not be eroded.”

Joseph E. Schmitz served as a foreign policy and national security advisor to Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. The opinions expressed in this article are his personal opinions. Schmitz served as Inspector General of the Department of Defense from 2002-2005 and is now Chief Legal Officer of Pacem Solutions International. He graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy, earned his J.D. degree from Stanford Law School, and is author of "The Inspector General Handbook: Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Other Constitutional ‘Enemies, Foreign and Domestic.’" Read more reports from Joseph E. Schmitz — Click Here Now.