Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target, reports the New York Times: science. The National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Energy have set up programs to look for sexual discrimination at universities receiving federal grants. Investigators have been taking inventories of lab space and interviewing faculty members and students in physics and engineering departments at schools such as Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, MIT, and the University of Maryland. So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven’t had much visible impact on campuses, beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members. But some critics fear that the process could lead to a quota system that could seriously hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women…

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