Moving beyond Title IX’s first 50 years

On June 23 we will be moving beyond Title IX’s first 50 years into the next half-century. There’s so much left to accomplish. Knowing the history of Title IX’s successes and not-yet-successes can guide us as we move forward and help us cope when society moves backward in dealing with sex discrimination. This week I had the opportunity to make a little video about that. It’s just a short promotional piece, but feel free to share with anyone who doesn’t yet understand Title IX history: The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, whose major conference has the wonderful nickname “Big Berks,” […]

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National Women’s History Museum features Title IX

I’ll be in conversation with Professor Eileen Tamura this Thursday, June 15 at 6 p.m. Eastern Time when the National Women’s History Museum features Title IX in a free online event. Register here to receive the Zoom link. Professor Tamura, of the University of Hawaii, and I both were researching Title IX history in the past decade, working on our respective books, and we shared some interview transcripts with each other. Her new book, We Too! Gender Equity in Education and the Road to Title IX, goes into much more of the history (or herstory) leading up to Title IX’s […]

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Title IX discussion questions available

If your class or book group would like to talk about the ideas and stories raised in my book 37 Words, I’ve got some Title IX discussion questions for you! And if you’d like me to Zoom in on the discussion, that could be arranged. Reach me through my contact page. 37 Words – Suggested Discussion Questions Chapter 1: Strong — 1969 Chapter 2: Complaints — 1970 Chapter 3: Congress – 1970-1972 Chapter 4: Implementation – 1972-1977 Chapter 5: Sexual Harassment – 1977-1980 Chapter 6: Enforcement – 1975-1979 Chapter 7: Backlash – 1980-1990 Chapter 8: Christine, Jackie, Rebecca, Nicole, Alida, LaShonda […]

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Talking Title IX in Maine

Join me for three events this week in the Pine Tree State, where I’ll be talking about Title IX in Maine. The Portland Press Herald published a Commentary by me with a preview of some of what I’ll say. (And in case you missed it, here’s an earlier version published March 24 by the Concord Monitor.) The rights of transgender students to play school sports is one big topic, of course — see the latest news below under “Elsewhere.” It helps to have an understanding of Title IX history to talk about this issue intelligently and compassionately. And we’ll also […]

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Talking Title IX in Concord, N.H.

I’m headed for the New Hampshire state capital to speak at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord on Tuesday, March 21 at 6:30 p.m. Meet me at 45 South Main Street to discuss Title IX in the Granite State and my book  37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination (The New Press). Spoiler: New Hampshire colleges and universities still don’t comply with Title IX. But you already guessed that. Meanwhile, some state legislators tried three times in the past three years to ban transgender students from athletics, but they haven’t succeeded. Yet. That would be another violation of Title IX. […]

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A year of blogging: Title IX’s 50th

Twelve months ago I said I’d recognize Title IX’s 50th anniversary with a year of weekly blog posts here on 37 Words. I’ve focused each post on a particular Title IX topic in the news that week or on an upcoming event for my book 37 Words: Title IX and 50 Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination. I also provided a weekly curated summary of Title IX news stories, with links. There are four months left until the 50th anniversary year ends on June 23, 2023. But my year-long project of weekly posts is complete. After today, I won’t be summarizing […]

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Talking about Title IX in Iowa

I’ll be talking about Title IX and the last half-century of fighting sex discrimination in education at Iowa State University on Tuesday, February 7. The event is free, and you’re invited! If you’re anywhere in the vicinity of Ames, Iowa, meet me in the Durham Great Hall of the Memorial Union at 7 p.m. Afterward, I’ll be signing books in the South Ballroom. The kind folks at Iowa State named me the 2023 Mary Louise Smith Chair in Women and Politics. I’m the 35th woman to receive this honor, named after the first woman to chair the Republican National Committee. […]

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New tool from End Rape on Campus

The non-profit activist organization End Rape on Campus just released a new Campus Accountability Map and Tool. It’s a pilot digital interactive map where users can get information about specific colleges and universities — crowd-sourced information like sexual assault statistics at that school in 2018-2020, and whether the school is under investigation for Title IX violations. It lists the school’s policies around sexual harassment and assault, including how it conducts its investigations, its prevention efforts, the kinds of support offered to assault survivors, and how these are accessible to students with disabilities. At its launch, the map includes 750 of […]

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Prison classrooms neglect women

Prison classrooms aim to help rehabilitate convicts, but it seems they’re mainly designed to help men, a new study out of Texas found. Women behind bars get fewer choices for classes and for degrees and face other educational obstacles. When you think of Title IX, do you picture K-12 schools or college and university campuses? It covers these and so much more, including vocational, career, and technical education, as I discussed in last week’s blog post. If there’s a classroom, and it is connected to federal funding, Title IX applies. Including prisons. How do prison education programs get away with […]

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Sex discrimination affects climate change

What does sex discrimination in education have to do with the fight against climate change? Lots. In this slow week for Title IX news while students are on winter break, I’ll mention just one. Think about it — we need armies of electricians to combat the climate crisis. Many more than we have right now. They need to be installing solar panels and windmills and heat pumps and electric convection stoves instead of gas- and oil-using products. Building electric vehicles. Designing more energy-efficient electronics. And all of that a.s.a.p. if we’re to have any hope of slowing climate change. But […]

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Schools ignore Title IX with impunity

Many schools ignore Title IX with impunity, a stellar investigation by USA Today found. In the final installment of its 2022 series of investigations for Title IX’s 50th anniversary, USA Today reported on its year-long study of letters and agreements between the federal Office for Civil Rights and universities in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. (An aside: USA Today deserves a Pulitzer for this series, imho.) Schools that practice sex discrimination have little to fear from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is charged with enforcing Title IX and other civil rights laws. Too many universities brashly […]

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Last stop: Talking about Title IX in Ohio

To close out my month-long book tour I’ll be signing books and talking about Title IX at two bookstores in Ohio on Friday, November 18. First up: Come say hello and get your signed copy of 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination at 12:00 noon Eastern Time at Gathering Volumes bookstore in Perrysburg, near Toledo. That evening, I’ll be speaking at Walls of Books in Parma, near Cleveland, at 7:00 p.m. We’ll also be raffling off a copy of 37 Words to celebrate the end of my book tour! Join us at 7783 W. Ridgewood […]

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Talking about Title IX in Atlanta

Georgia Institute of Technology President Angel Cabrera Izquierdo and I will be talking about Title IX in Atlanta in one of his “Conversations with Cabrera” on Tuesday, November 15 at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The event is free and open to the public. Come join us at Price Gilbert Memorial Library’s Scholars Event Theater, room 1280, 704 Cherry Street Northwest, Atlanta. Seating is limited, so register here. The event also will be webcast via Zoom. Register to receive the link. Elsewhere Brown University agreed to pay $1,135,000 for the legal fees of plaintiffs in a 2020 lawsuit claiming that the […]

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Talking about Title IX in Minneapolis-St. Paul

I’m on my way to the Twin Cities, where I’ll be talking about 37 Words and Title IX in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Join me for a free event open to all at SubText Books in St. Paul on Friday, November 11 at 7 p.m. I’m especially pleased that I’ll be in conversation with Title IX expert Mary Jo Kane, professor emerita in sport sociology and former director of the Tucker Center at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. It’s sure to be a fascinating hour! If you’re planning to attend the National Women’s Studies Association meeting in Minneapolis this weekend, […]

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Talking about Title IX in Missouri

This Thursday and Friday I’ll be talking about Title IX in Missouri, hosted by two wonderful book stores in St. Louis and Columbia, home of the University of Missouri main campus. One of the events will be live-streamed, so you can join us even if you’re not in the Show-Me State! First up on Thursday, November 3 at 7:00 p.m. is the fabulous Left Bank Books, located in one of the most happening neighborhoods in St. Louis, the Central West End. Register here and pre-order your copy of 37 Words to make sure it’s there for me to sign. If […]

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Talking about Title IX in Syracuse

I’ll be talking about Title IX in Syracuse on Monday, October 24 at 5 p.m. Eastern Time in Grewen Auditorium of Le Moyne College. The event is free and open to the public. Also that day, look for me on Bridge Street TV in an interview with 9WSYR. If you’re near Erie, Penn. come chat with me during a book signing at Werner Books the next day, Tuesday, October 25 at 12 noon Eastern. And on Friday, October 28 we’ll kick off a two-day conference on Title IX hosted by Northwestern University with our 9 a.m. (Central Time) panel on […]

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Y’all are welcome in Texas (virtually)

Y’all are welcome at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Women in Law for an online conversation with me on Wednesday, October 19 at 1 p.m. Central Time as part of their “Ex Libris” authors series. It’s free, but you’ll need to register here. If you’re a lawyer, you can earn 1 hour of Continuing Legal Education credit if you join us online as we talk about Title IX and my book 37 Words. But everyone is welcome. So listen in, and bring your questions! And I’m about to hit the non-virtual, asphalt-and-concrete road on a book tour that will take […]

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Title IX showdown on abortion

A recent Supreme Court ruling clashed with existing laws, producing a Title IX showdown on abortion of sorts in schools, colleges, and universities. The U.S. Department of Education reminded educational institutions that Title IX protects students, faculty, and staff against discrimination based on pregnancy and related conditions, including the termination of pregnancy. Officials released the three-page fact sheet 100 days after the Supreme Court canceled the constitutional right to an abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in a ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Title IX has protected abortion as an integral part […]

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Video: athletes see the differences in treatment

Rather than read the case files of recent Title IX lawsuits, you can easily get the picture through this short video of athletes describing how they see differences in their schools’ treatment of girls’ and boys’ sports. In this case, it’s royal treatment for baseball and shabbier treatment for softball. It’s an age-old story, unfortunately. A half-century after Title IX outlawed this kind of discrimination, it’s all too common. Girls (and their parents) still have to sue to get school officials to fix it. And girls everywhere almost always win those suits. (Top photo: A screen shot of an athlete […]

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Book censorship attempts on the rise

Requests for book censorship are a bigger problem than ever before, the American Library Association announced as part of Banned Books Week, September 18-24, 2022. In 2021, 729 requests tried to ban 1,597 books. So far in 2022, 681 attempts tried to ban 1,651 books, on a pace to break the record for book censorship activity in the 20+ years that the American Library Association has been tracking it. This blog focuses on Title IX and its prohibition of sex discrimination in education. Attempts to ban books don’t fit neatly into that niche. But consider this: People and organizations that […]

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Comments on Title IX regulations hit record

People and organizations submitted a record number of comments on Title IX regulations proposed by the Biden Administration. The Department of Education will review 240,085 comments received by the September 12 deadline before taking its next steps to revise Title IX’s regulations. The surge in interest continues a trend in Title IX history. Before the Department of Education proposed the first Title IX regulations in 1974 to combat sex discrimination in education, notices of proposed regulations to implement laws might draw 10 comments, or maybe 400 for more controversial proposals. The draft Title IX regulations generated nearly 10,000 comments, an […]

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Time for Congress to enforce Title IX in sports?

Fifty years of failure to stop sex discrimination in school athletics means that it’s time for Congress to help enforce Title IX in sports, an influential think tank proposed. If schools with athletics programs want federal funding (which nearly all schools and colleges currently receive), they should be compelled to meet a new requirement, the Drake Group suggested. Their sports programs should be governed by an athletic conference or similar organization that mandates compliance with Title IX by its member schools before they can compete for post-season championships, says Andrew Zimbalist, president of the group’s board of directors. Only then […]

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Where are “protectors” of women’s sports now?

The self-designated “protectors” of women’s sports who loudly oppose allowing a few transgender girls and women to compete remain oddly silent about practices that unfairly give hundreds of women’s playing slots to cisgender men year after year after year. An excellent USA Today article this week exposed some of the ways that college athletics programs routinely shortchange women’s teams. Three big ones: counting men who practice with women’s teams as women, double-counting women athletes, and packing so many women onto a team that most never get a chance to play, instead of creating more teams for women. For example, I […]

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Potential big deal for Title IX lawsuits

A little-noticed legal ruling this week could be a big deal for Title IX lawsuits going forward. If I’m reading this right, colleges and universities could be held accountable not only for cases in which they were deliberately indifferent to reports of sexual harassment and assault after they happened. They could also be held accountable for inadequate management of campus sexual violence before the next attacks occur because their actions (or lack of them) increased the risk for more victims, violating Title IX. What does that look like in real life? The ruling from a three-judge Appeals Court panel gave […]

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Exhibit displays history of Title IX activism

Readers of my book 37 Words know that its story arcs follow the history of Title IX activism. If you’re anywhere near New York City between now and September 4, you can see a more visual representation of this in a new exhibit by the New York Historical Society, “Title IX: Activism On and Off the Field.” At a preview reception this week, I had the pleasure of meeting Title IX activists of all ages. Some I knew and had interviewed but never met, such as Rollin Haffer. She instigated the first Title IX lawsuit claiming sex discrimination in an […]

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Confronting child sex trafficking on campus

Child sex trafficking isn’t the first thing most people think of when they consider sexual harassment and assault in higher education. But it’s more common than you may think. And perpetrators are almost all white, male academics, according to a study by Lori Handrahan, Ph.D. More than half held leadership positions on campus. It’s perhaps significant that the findings come from an independent scholar, meaning she currently holds no faculty position. Here’s her report in the Journal of Human Trafficking with more. You can see a concise summary of her findings that she posted on Medium. And here’s the awesome […]

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Title IX still a mystery to most

You don’t need to be Agatha Christie to wonder why Title IX is a mystery to most people. Congress passed this civil rights law a half-century ago. Activists demanding an education free of sex discrimination have generated headlines for 50 years. So why are people still clueless? A new poll found that 71% of children and 58% of parents know nothing about Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in education. You can’t access a right that you don’t know you have. If educational institutions and the government wanted people to know about it, they […]

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37 Words published, in top 100 lists

The New Press published 37 Words this week, and early copies have been arriving for the past week to those who pre-ordered the book. It’s in the top 100 books by sales in three categories on Amazon: federal education legislation; gender and the law, and educational law and legislation law. You can watch and hear me describe the book, and the people and movements that it contains, in a virtual discussion this week with Kenyora Parham, executive director of End Rape on Campus. I also had a stimulating public conversation at the Norwich Bookstore on my publication day with Kate […]

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It’s finally here — 37 Words the book

Seven years ago I decided to write a book about something that inspires me, which became 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination. At the time, I wasn’t sure how to do it, or even if I could do it. So the first thing I did was to start telling everyone that I was doing it. I psyched myself into believing in the project and publicly committed to it in order to make it harder to back out. It worked! The New Press formally releases 37 Words on Tuesday, April 12. Friends who have pre-ordered copies […]

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Revisiting AIAW during March Madness

With the March Madness basketball tournaments in full swing, I can’t resist revisiting a fine article in the Washington Post about the NCAA’s dead sibling, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). This “Made by History” article is full of important women’s history. The NCAA used to manage men’s intercollegiate sports and the AIAW oversaw women’s sports. I often wonder what athletics would look like today if the NCAA hadn’t muscled the AIAW out of existence and took over its territory. While we’re at it, here’s an excerpt of my video interview with Margot Polivy, who was the legal […]

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Congress mandates surveys on sexual violence

Once again the federal Education Department is stepping in to do something that all colleges should have done but many haven’t — surveys about sexual violence on campus. Hooray for the feds. Under a provision tucked into a 3,000-page Congressional bill to fund the federal government for six months, the Education Department will develop an online survey to measure students’ experiences with sexual harassment and assault, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Any college receiving federal funds will be required to conduct the campus-climate survey every two years, and the Education Department will publish aggregate results. The legislation also calls […]

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Burnout troubling Title IX coordinators

Regulations imposed by former President Donald Trump and his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos worsened an already high level of burnout among Title IX coordinators in schools, districts, and higher education. One of the 2020 rules from DeVos required live hearings, which made the investigation and resolution of sex discrimination complaints more like courtrooms than civil proceedings. That increased the workload and slowed the whole process down. TNG, a consulting company, expected this might slow down a Title IX case by two to four weeks but they’re seeing delays of two or more months, a recent report noted. In some schools, […]

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Men get rehired, women get rejected

There’s a double standard in college sports that treats coaches differently depending on whether they discriminated under Title IX or were the ones discriminated against — men get rehired, and women get rejected for other top coaching jobs. But the latest example of that suggests that there may be a crack or even a tectonic shift in that double standard, perhaps due to Title IX activism of the past decade that fed into the #metoo movement. In the past week, Grambling (La.) State University hired Art Briles, the disgraced former football coach for Baylor University, to be offensive coordinator. Baylor […]

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Title IX cases highlight institutional betrayal

Big names in academia gave shameful public lessons recently on what institutional betrayal looks like. At Harvard University, 38 faculty members signed an open letter challenging the university’s decision to bar anthropologist John Comaroff from teaching or taking on new advisees after two investigations supported reports of his sexual and professional misconduct. The signers included famous academics and public figures. But then 73 Harvard faculty released a letter blasting their colleagues for rushing to defend the alleged abuser without knowing all the facts, thus publicly betraying student victims in a way that could pressure other victims not to report misconduct. After […]

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37 Words for 47 weeks

Tuesday, National Girls and Women in Sports Day, also was World Read Aloud Day and the second day of National Library Lovers Month. That’s a hodgepodge, I admit. But it’s perhaps a fitting way to introduce the first of a series of weekly blog posts honoring this 50th year of Title IX, the revolutionary law that prohibits sex discrimination in education and is the subject of my book 37 Words. If you haven’t already, subscribe to my blog “37 Words” and you’ll get a weekly note in your email inbox with a hodgepodge of my takes on a variety of […]

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Art for art’s sake blooms at Djerassi

Note to readers: This post is not about Title IX or my forthcoming book. It’s a love letter of sorts to the Djerassi Resident Artists Program for giving me a month of space and time in which other forms of art emerged while writing my book. I came to Djerassi to write, and write I did. But I also took to heart the entreaty at our group orientation to “Just be.” No expectations. See what emerges. Part of my being involves walking, and walk I did. Trails led to one vista after another of land and sky and ocean glowing […]

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