Bad News for the Office for Civil Rights and the Students It Serves?
A Chronicle of Higher Education story indicates the likely nominee for the Assistant Secretary for the Office for Civil Rights will be Gail Heroit, who may take the Office in an entirely new direction. As discussed here and here, the Office has recently done incredible work. It seems that the task of the new Assistant Secretary is to undo substantial portions of it. The Chronicle writes:
Leading conservative activists are predicting that the Trump administration will put a prominent critic of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in charge of it, to scale back its efforts.
Although the White House has yet to tip its hand on its pick as the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, speculation among plugged-in Republicans whose views have influenced other cabinet picks centers on two well-known conservative figures: Gail Heriot and Peter N. Kirsanow. Both Ms. Heriot and Mr. Kirsanow are members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights who recently have accused the department of overreach in dealing with sexual assault and the rights of transgender students on college campuses. Both also have been vocal critics of colleges’ consideration of race in admissions and student housing.
Of the two, Ms. Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, may be most likely to get the nomination. That’s partly because Mr. Kirsanow, a labor lawyer in Cleveland, has a broad background that places him in the running for an array of other federal positions. That Ms. Heriot is a woman also could work in her favor, as the Trump administration might see her sex as giving her a measure of political cover in carrying out one of its top priorities for the civil-rights office — reducing the office’s guidance on Title IX, the federal gender-equity law.
More than 240 activists and college faculty members, nearly all conservative or traditionalist in their views, have joined the National Association of Scholars and six other organizations in sending Trump-administration officials a letter endorsing Ms. Heriot as assistant secretary.Education Law Prof Blog: