With the full backing of President Joe Biden , the progressives who run the Department of Education have proposed radical changes to the agency’s regulations under Title IX, the law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs that receive federal funds. Those concerned with the ideological takeover of higher education should watch matters closely. The administration’s Title IX rulemaking is a master class in how the Left leverages centralized regulatory power to embed progressive orthodoxy in institutions.

Observers have spilled gallons of ink decrying the department’s proposed changes under Title IX. Much criticism has rightly focused on the damage to female athletes, as well as the inexplicable efforts to dilute critical due process protections in campus disciplinary proceedings. These criticisms are well deserved, but one piece deserves greater scrutiny: the vesting of vast new powers in campus Title IX offices as the vehicle to enforce conformity with gender ideology within academia.

How does the administration intend to accomplish this? Its Title IX regulatory package provides many examples, but the issue comes down to three major changes. One should be careful not to consider them in isolation.

In 1972, when Congress passed Title IX, it did so with a binary, biological understanding of the word “sex.” The law’s text, structure, purpose, and legislative history support this interpretation, so the administration must wave a regulatory magic wand to expand Title IX’s anti-sex discrimination prohibition to include “gender identity,” which, of course, is left undefined. By including but refusing to define “gender identity,” there’s no limit to what Title IX would protect.

A student may thus identify as male or female or as any of the Left’s gender identity classifications, including “nonbinary,” “cisgender,” “transgender,” “agender,” “bigender,” “demigender,” “pangender,” or “xenogender.” The list goes on and may depend on the day or week or month or semester or year. Endless permutations and classifications would ensue, but colleges and universities would be required to enforce this gender identity regime or lose federal funding. Gender identity would forever be in the eye of the beholder, and the ultimate beholder would be the person charged with the rule’s enforcement on campus — the Title IX coordinator.

This sea change in Title IX’s coverage is especially important in light of the administration’s effort to abolish the current standard for sexual harassment finalized by then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in 2020. In addition to including quid pro quo harassment and sexual assault, the DeVos rule hews closely to applicable Supreme Court case law to define sexual harassment as “unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access” to the institution’s educational program. As a result, Title IX offices must focus on serious instances of sexual harassment rather than investigating an isolated remark in a class or a scholar’s controversial opinion.

The Biden administration proposes to turn this objective standard into a subjective, fact-intensive “totality of circumstances” test focused on whether unwelcome conduct is “severe or pervasive.” Who would enforce this Justice Potter Stewart-style “I know it when I see it” standard? The Title IX coordinator.

With gender identity harassment tucked within Title IX’s protections, any refusal to acknowledge, or error in recognizing, one’s chosen gender identity could be seen as a violation under Joe Biden’s new Title IX regime. It’s easy to see where this is going.

Simply revising definitions and standards, however, is not enough if you’re pushing a cultural revolution. For lasting effect, one needs to embed in institutions change agents, persons whom the German American political theorist Herbert Marcuse described as “working against the established institutions while working in them.” (Marcuse birthed the Left’s strategy of the “long march through institutions.”) Today, given higher ed’s eager embrace of gender ideology, one might paraphrase this as “working with the established institutions while working in them.” With the full power of the federal government behind it, the campus Title IX bureaucracy will serve as this agent.

The DeVos rule wisely prohibits Title IX coordinators from combining the roles of investigator, judge, and executioner and assigns them specific duties, such as taking reports of sex discrimination, offering supportive measures to students, launching the grievance process upon the filing of a complaint, and implementing post-adjudication remedies. The result has been a focus on specific harassment allegations and supporting students.

The Biden Education Department would abolish this thoughtful regime by allowing the “single investigator model” and detaching coordinators from these focused duties to serve as roving patrolmen who “monitor” their universities for “barriers to reporting information about conduct that may constitute sex discrimination under Title IX.” As a condition of federal funding, these campus civility investigators would have to take “steps reasonably calculated to address such barriers,” whether or not anyone alleges that any such barriers exist. No report of sex (er, gender identity) harassment or discrimination would be needed.

This change is particularly troubling when one considers that Biden's team also proposes to expand the universe of people who must report on potential violations. This number includes deans, assistant or associate deans, directors of programs or activities, coaches, public safety supervisors, faculty, graduate teaching assistants, academic advisers, and advisers for clubs, fraternities, sororities, and student programs. This expansion would require personnel to report, and the coordinator to police reporting on, any campus conduct that might constitute sex (or gender identity) discrimination or harassment. Failure to do so would threaten federal funding.

Progressive groups are almost certainly lined up to file complaints over pronouns, bathrooms, dorms, and athletic teams with Title IX offices.

The administration promises to finalize its rule in October. Whatever the timing, the weaponization of Title IX offices to enforce gender ideology should concern those who believe in the rule of law, free speech, and religious liberty. Absent congressional action, dismantlement of Biden’s Title IX regulatory regime should be the first priority for the next administration’s secretary of education.

Robert S. Eitel, a former senior counselor to the U.S. secretary of education, is the president and co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies.