Celene Reynolds, "Unlawful Advances: How Feminists Transformed Title IX"

Abstract: The application of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to sexual harassment remains enormously controversial. Over the last 15 years, US federal officials have issued three different policies specifying what it means to comply with this civil rights law, which prohibits schools from discriminating “on the basis of sex.” These political and organizational battles over Title IX center on the question of how, not whether, the law should regulate sexual harassment. All this is recent: the university policies, procedures, and infrastructure at the heart of the current debate did not exist fifty years ago. Back then, at the time of the law’s passage, no one understood sexual harassment as a problem that schools ought to address. How and why did sexual harassment become illegal under Title IX? Drawing on multiple types of evidence, much never before unearthed, I argue that the women claiming protection under Title IX redefined sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination barred by the law. Working together in what I call creative coalitions, feminist students and lawyers fundamentally changed the right to equal opportunity in education, reshaping university governance and campus norms. Their collaborations spanned the domains of education and law, generated novel ideas and pathways for action, and enabled these women to make history. The transformation of Title IX is far from finished, however, illustrating the continuing importance of understanding the broader process of modern legal change.