Early this year Pepperdine University’s president quietly sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The subject line was nearly identical to that of a letter that a previous president had sent, in 1976: "Pepperdine University’s Title IX Exemption." But the two letters had opposite goals. In 1976 Pepperdine had asked to be made exempt from Title IX, a law that bans sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funds. Now, four decades later, the university was taking the unusual step of asking to waive that exemption.