Two powerhouses for women's rights celebrate their golden anniversaries in 2022: The National Women's Law Center and Title IX share a birthday year! You know I love history, but their influence today, in the here and now, gives me hope…
In honor of Title IX's 50th anniversary on June 23, my blog posts this month will feature the voices of activists from Title IX history who I had the pleasure of interviewing for my book 37 Words. First up: the…
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…
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…
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…
The leaked draft Supreme Court decision that could cancel abortion rights dominated headlines this week, but earlier abortion controversy altered Title IX history in ways that are worth remembering. Read more about this in my article in The Washington Post Made by History…
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…
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…
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;…
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…
Revisions to Title IX's regulations that are expected to be proposed by the White House in April will affirm explicitly for the first time that Title IX's protections cover queer and transgender people. The regulations' prohibition of sex discrimination in…
Readers are sending 37 Words to: U.S. Capitol dome (Wikimedia Commons) Congress -- House of Representatives: California: Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Jackie Speier District of Columbia: Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton Minnesota: Rep. Ilhan Omar New York: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Rhode…
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…
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…
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. (By CIPHR Connect / Wikimedia Commons) One of the 2020…
https://youtu.be/_Ivuyj4WyLE 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…
Joseph I. Castro, 2013 (Wikimedia Commons) Years before California State Universities Chancellor Joseph I. Castro resigned following allegations of mishandling sexual misconduct complaints while president of Fresno State, there was another Title IX situation in which he seemingly chose to…
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…
Today's debates about transgender athletes competing in elite sports remind me of the early days of Title IX when feminists and everyone else in society were trying to figure out how to include women of any kind in school sports…
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…