Mr. Obama Puts His Bootprint On Higher Education

Mr. Obama's Department of Education is totally refurbishing the formerly defunct National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI). If you thought university staff and faculty had gone overboard on politically correct speech codes, race-gender consciousness-raising, and far-to-the-left indoctrination of students to the point of academic lobotomisation, take a look at the makeup of the new NACIQI committee:

Earl Lewis, currently the provost at Emory University, was previously the dean of graduate studies at the University of Michigan. He was heavily involved in the 2003 landmark legal case Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan's law school's race-based admissions policy. Lewis has since co-authored Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan.

Frank H. Wu is the first Asian-American professor to teach at Howard Law School and testified in Grutter v. Bollinger in favor of affirmative action. He is the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. In it he calls for a new paradigm in American race relations, which unfortunately looks like the same old divisive enfranchisement of racial antagonisms and grievances known as multiculturalism. And he suggests that ethnic minorities should form coalitions to press for political power.

Jamienne S. Studley was once the president of Skidmore College and legal counsel for the Department of Education during the Clinton administration. She is currently the president and CEO of Public Advocates Inc., a California-based "nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization" that, according to its mission statement, "challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination." In November of 2009, Public Advocates Inc. released the following "Statement in Support of ACORN":
Public Advocates believes that real change and real justice only happen when disadvantaged and excluded communities organize, speak out together, and build their own power. That's why we are proud to have worked for years with California ACORN as partners, friends, and lawyers.


Federico Zaragoza is the vice chancellor for professional, technical and workforce education for the Alamo Community Colleges system (the San Antonio region). While most information about him suggests a straightforward emphasis on vocational and continuing education, in a report he wrote for the system's website in 2007, he twice mentions activities undertaken in conjunction with LULAC. LULAC was started as a patriotic organization back in 1929, promoting the assimilation of Hispanics through learning English. It became radicalized in the 1960s.

Susan Phillips is a psychology professor and provost and vice president for academic affairs at the State University of New York, Albany (SUNY). According to her school biography, she has been "instrumental in creating cross-disciplinary initiatives, including developing research capacity for university-community partnerships through the University at Albany's NIH-sponsored Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities."

Aron Shimeles is the most questionable appointment. The son of Ethiopian immigrants, he is a senior at Occidental College in Los Angeles, President Obama's first college. He is a member of the school's Black Student Alliance and helped to produce a hip-hop concert for them.
Shimeles is also listed as a member of the editorial board of the Critical Theory and Social Justice Journal of Undergraduate Research. The journal's mission statement says that "CTSJ is dedicated to providing a forum for undergraduate students to develop and share critical research and writing on the intersections of 'race', 'sexuality', and 'nationality' as they relate to problems of social justice."


...Obama and Duncan have not likely appointed this group to be their representatives on NACIQI to maintain the status quo, but rather to push their agenda. Establishing control over the accreditation process could be a great source of bureaucratic power. Since the federal government will provide financial aid only to students of accredited schools, a college's existence is precarious at best without it (except for the handful of schools that forgo federal aid).


It should therefore come as no surprise if the new members attempt to introduce diversity mandates and social engineering into the accreditation process. And it is not likely that this Congress will try to stop them if they do, as they did in 2008. _Source

This committee of far-left political activists will have the power of life or death over any university that wants accreditation. But this is Mr. Obama's legacy to US higher education. He may be an incompetent clown, but at least he puts ideology ahead of a quality education.