Upended intercollegiate sports but also touched many corners of campus, forcing shifts in hiring, promotion, admissions, reckoning on sexual harassment, assault

A half century after its enactment, Title IX, the federal law that bars discrimination against women in education, has forced a leveling of the playing field on campus, though advocates say its work is still not done. In recent years, the law has forced a reckoning over sexual harassment and assault on campus, and its protections have been extended to cover bias on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Those impacts follow on others, particularly in women's sports, where the changes it forced have been described as "transformative." The Gazette asked Jeannie Suk Gersen, the John H. Watson Jr. Professor of Law and an expert on gender and the law, and Susan Ware, A.M. '73, Ph.D. '78, historian and author of "Title IX: A Brief History With Documents" (2014) to discuss the legacy of the law. The two were interviewed separately for this piece, and both interviews were edited for clarity and length.