I am not an expert on the subject of feminist university tribunals but would like to share what I know, from the perspective of a former human rights worker who worked in collaboration with UN agencies and international human rights organizations that monitor human rights violations, with the hope that others could add their knowledge and that members share their personal stories.

Thousands of universities in the US and all over the world were driven by feminists to enact internal tribunals, that are ruling in possibly thousands of cases yearly globally on allegations of sexual harassment within the institution. In these tribunals, a text message to an ex-girlfriend by a student, or a romantic relationship between a male teaching assistant and a female student (a teaching assistant is just a student, he would be about the same age as the students he's teaching, he will often be one or two years more senior), will lead to a kind of trial on sexual harassment before the committee, and sometimes without the female student even filing any complaint to the institution as in the example of the TA and the female student - two students that became a couple but got to know each other when he was a TA and she a student in his class (this is a real case, he was banished from the institution). In these tribunals, the "judges" are feminist women, faculty members usually. The accused is not entitled for legal representation and is not allowed to be accompanied by a lawyer in the proceedings. Without exception, the feminists functioning as prosecutes and judges will "convict" and the punishments would usually be either banishment from the institution or removal for periods of years. Both male students and male faculty are summoned to these tribunals.

The entire illegal practice has evolved over two decades as follows: first, about 2-3 decades ago, feminists redefined sexual harassment to include any type of romantic relations in a hierarchy (TA and student), and continuously lowered the bar until any reported "discomfort" by a female student was considered harassment ("I received a text message from my ex three months after we broke up, 'how are you doing' - it made me feel unsafe"). None of the new definitions were added to laws as constituting sexual harassment, so with the aspiration of circumventing this to apply the new definitions nonetheless, as early as two decades ago feminists first started shaming institutions publicly in newspapers when such incidents as a romance between a faculty member and a student that was initiated by the student and ended in an unpleasant breakup (again, a true case) were brought to their knowledge ("the institution protects perpetrators"), and then feminists from within institutions used the public shaming that feminists from the outside caused, to demand their university to apply an internal mechanism to allegedly "respond to a harassment".

They used a procedure that all universities have (and many other public organizations, such as the police or the army), which is an administrative proceeding originally meant for cases where a member of an organization has violated an internal ethical code of the organization - this is the proceeding used when a student was caught cheating or a faculty member found guilty in a court of law in an act that violates the institution's ethical code.

The thousands of university tribunals are illegal because they are discussing cases that per the allegations, are sexual harassment which is criminal, and only courts have the authority to discuss criminal suspicions. When the suspicion is of a criminal act, this internal institutional proceeding can be applied if a person was already found guilty in a court of law, but not prior to that. Only if a court ruled "guilty" then the institution can regard a suspicion as fact and thus as a true violation of its ethical code - but the institution itself is not a police and a court and cannot decide whether a suspicion of harassment, which is criminal, did or did not take place or was or was not criminal. Only courts have such legal authority and in any country, anyone taking this authority is breaking the law. Internal committees have authority to discuss acts that are not criminal but yet violate their internal ethical code, e.g., cheating in a test, but not any suspicions of a criminal nature that are not only of a violation of an internal code but of the law - criminal acts. For example, if a university suspects that a worker was stealing, they cannot decide to resolve this internally through the ethical committee that would decide first, whether a criminal act was done or not, and second, what is the punishment - they are not the court and do not have this authority and taking this authority is illegal. Importantly, the reason it is illegal in democratic countries, is that courts have been carefully designed to prevent violation of human rights. Taking the authority of a court is thus first and foremost a breach in the protection of human rights. The practice of operating a police and court outside the legal system, is familiar from undemocratic regimes and known as a "secret police" and as trials conducted in the shadows. In democracies, only after a court ruled in the stealing case, then the institute can treat it as something that occurred and so as a violation of the internal ethical code and discuss internally after the court had finished discussing the case, about internal sanctions.

The reason of course that complaints are almost never filed to the police and no legal procedures are held in those cases is that there was nothing illegal in what the male student or faculty has done (texting an ex), but feminists wanted to apply their new definitions so they forced institutions through public shaming to allow them to rule in these situations as if this falls under the definition of a violation of an internal code of ethics, while the allegations are of something institutions do not have the authority to rule about - sexual harassment, which is criminal. If harassment might have taken place, then the only way forward is through the legal system and only once this procedure was concluded, an internal institutional ethics committee can discuss. If there is no suspicion of sexual harassment then there was no violation of an ethical code and again the tribunal does not have authority. These tribunals are illegal and a violation of human rights, the right for due process for and foremost.

If these practices were done in third-world countries about, say, political affairs instead of sexual affairs (so the allegations would be "committed an act of political violence against the ideology of the regime"; edit: or if it was done in a third-world country about sexual affairs, but with the tribunals directed against women for the same behaviors, considered a breach for example of a religious ideology - so a female student texting a male would lose her degree possibly irrevocably but never a male doing the same), such countries would currently be under international sanctions for violating international treaties of universal rights. Almost all countries in the west should have been under sanctions right now for these violations of human rights by universities because of the feminist ideology implemented through them to violate human rights, but, the countries that are those who guarded human rights, are the ones committing the violations. There is no "west of the west" to demand accountability of the west itself. Nothing is standing in the way of such violation of human rights. Maybe except for this forum, a brave and admirable organization called Mothers of Sons, and a handful of brave advocates of both sexes who do their best to document these violations.

Here is one article from the Washington post about this practice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/02/03/fairness-and-campus-tribunals/