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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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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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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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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Women’s Equality Day includes education

Women’s Equality Day on August 26 includes the struggle for equity in education, which handily illustrates how movements for various aspects of women’s rights are never really separate from each other. On that date in 1920, U.S. women won the right to vote, though racism limited access to voting mainly to white women for the following 44 years until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Author and activist Betty Friedan surprised her feminist allies in 1970 by calling for a Women’s Strike for Equality, urging women to pour into the streets on August 26. And they did all […]

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Title IX matters in “flyover states”

Title IX controversies historically draw the most attention if they come from elite coastal universities or Washington, D.C.’s halls of power, but sex discrimination matters just as much to schools in the so-called “flyover states.” In the 1970s women faculty and students in Kansas staged a sit-in demanding fairer policies for women in education. The movement against sexual violence activated students from the 1980s in Minnesota and Missouri to the 2010s in Ohio and Michigan and in every decade and state in between. The University of Nebraska recently launched an internal investigation of its compliance with Title IX after data […]

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37 Words coming to Korea

Good news — The publisher Wisdom House has licensed the rights to publish a translation of 37 Words in Korea! I’m surprised, I’ll admit. I figured that my history of Title IX and the struggle against sex discrimination in U.S. schools would be of interest only in the United States. I was wrong. Korea has a vibrant feminist movement. Not only will the book be coming to Korea, but this week Tel Aviv University in Israel held a conference on women in sports featuring a Zoom panel with me and others discussing Title IX. Apparently, some people in Israel feel […]

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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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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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A blogging holiday begins

I’m blogging less and less as I focus more on writing the manuscript for Uppity Women: Title IX and the Ongoing Fight for a Fair Education. I’ve already declared digital holidays from Instagram and Facebook. So, let’s make it official: I’m taking a blogging holiday at least until I finish a first draft of the book manuscript. I just returned from a two-week writing residency at the gorgeous Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes Station, Calif. Lucky me, I shared the Refuge with two fantastic people and writers, Jesus Mena and Davia Nelson. Jesus is writing a historical novel about the […]

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How to write history as a non-historian

Writing a non-fiction book isn’t a specific skill that we’re taught. It’s not an innate talent. How does one learn to write a book? In my case, by doing. I spent most of my career as a journalist, and those skills gave me a strong foundation to begin. But there are pitfalls to beware of when tackling something new that may require different skills. Uppity Women, my second non-fiction book, is something new to me – narrative history, not just journalism. Professional historians get specialized training that I don’t have. How, then, do I make sure that I get it right? A […]

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It’s a deal! The New Press signs for Uppity Women

Uppity Women has found a home. The New Press will publish my forthcoming book on the history of Title IX and today’s movement against sex discrimination in education. I’m honored to be in the company of authors like Tressie McMillan Cottom, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Martin Duberman, Studs Terkel, and Howard Zinn at The New Press. I’m delighted that Uppity Women will be in the same catalogue as Strangers in Their Own Land, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, and “People’s History” books on numerous topics (like poverty, LGBT history, the American revolution, art history, and so many […]

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Djerassi residency, LitCamp ahead

It’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of writing my book-in-progress, tentatively titled Uppity Women and the Ongoing Fight for a Fair Education. I’m still doing some interviews to fill in gaps in the amazing story of Title IX from its inception to today. But I’ll be taking more time to focus on writing, seeking reader feedback, and rewriting. Starting Wednesday, March 27, 2019 I’ll be spending a month at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Calif. I’m so excited to be invited to join other writers and artists there for four weeks of […]

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Ross Yoon Agency represents Uppity Women

I’m pleased to announce that Gail Ross of the Ross Yoon Agency is representing me and my book, a narrative history of Title IX. I’m working with Ross and her colleagues in the Washington, D.C.-based agency to finalize the book proposal for presentation to publishers. Everything is on track for me to finish writing the book and have it published well before the 50th anniversary of Title IX in 2022. The tentative title: Uppity Women and the Ongoing Fight for a Fair Education. In the four years that I’ve been conducting research and interviews for the book, I’ve mostly blogged about Title IX news and historical context here on […]

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