Showing posts with label Elizabeth Warren. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Warren. Show all posts

Friday, January 29, 2016

If I Had a Hammer! With great courage, distressed student-loan debtors all over America are going into the bankruptcy courts and petitioning for justice


If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning,
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land,
I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between,
My brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

Peter, Paul & Mary

Our government has committed a grave injustice on working Americans--young and old--by dispensing student-money recklessly to millions of people who accepted the money in good faith in the hope that they could use their student-loan funds to educate themselves and have better lives.


In effect, the government has engaged in predatory lending--something you and I would go to jail for. It has spewed billions of dollars around the United States for the benefit of sleazy colleges--public, private, and for-profit--knowing that nearly half the people who got the loan dollars would not be able to pay off their student loans. And this money got sucked up by the college industry. 

After lending the money like a benevolent grandmother giving out Christmas checks to her grandkids, the government then morphed into a heartless monster. In fact, all three branches of our federal government have conspired to grind student-loan debtors into the dust.
  • Congress passed laws making it extremely difficult for people to discharge their student-loan debt in bankruptcy.
  • Congress enacted legislation that wiped out the statute of limitations for collection lawsuits against student-loan debtors--essentially destroying a key principle of the common law of equity.
  • The Department of Education allows for-profit colleges to insert "you can't sue me" clauses in their college-admissions materials.
  • The Supreme Court, an assembly of nine old geezers, upheld a federal law that allows the Department of Education to garnish Social Security checks of elderly people who defaulted on their student loans.
More than 40 million people carry student-loan debt, and 20 million can't pay it back. They are trapped like rats while the government and its collection agencies conspire to drive student-loan debtors out of the economy and out of the middle class into a dark world of hopelessness.  

Our government leaders pretend to be sympathetic. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Charles Schumer coo soothingly about lower interest rates. President Obama spins out one long-term repayment plan after another.  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issues press releases announcing lower default rates, knowing that DOE is cooking the books.

This scheme--driven by the greed and indifference of higher-education leaders--cries out for justice, for a return to common decency.

And a few people, like Peter Finch's character in the movie Network, have stood up and said, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore."  Going into the bankruptcy courts, often without attorneys, a few intrepid souls have applied to have their student loans discharged in bankruptcy. Not all of them have been successful, but all have shown great courage.

So in this posting, I pay tribute to the grit and the bravery of the people who filed adversary actions in the bankruptcy courts to throw off their student-loan debt:

Alethea Lamento, single mother of two, who was working full time but who was forced to live with relatives because she did not make enough money to house her family. A bankruptcy court discharged her student loans over the objection of the Department of Education.


Lamento v. U.S. Department of Education, 520 B.R. 667 (Bankr. N.D. Ohio 2014)

George and Melanie Johnson, a married couple with two children who lost their home in foreclosure and who defeated Educational Credit Management Corporation in an adversary proceeding in Kansas. And they did it without a lawyer!


Johnson v. ECMCCase No. 11-23108, Adv. No. 11-6250 (Bankr. D. Kan. 2015)

Bradley Myhre, a quadriplegic working full time but did not make enough money to support himself because he was required to pay a fulltime caregiver just to feed and dress him and transport him back and forth to work. The Department of Education refused to forgive his student loans, but Myhre beat DOE in an adversary proceeding.


Myhre v. U.S. Department of Education503 B.R. 698 (Bankr. W.D. Wis. 2013)

Alexandra Acosta-Conniff, an Alabama school teacher and single mother of two, who went into the bankruptcy court without a lawyer and discharged student-loan debt over the opposition of Educational Credit Management Corporation.  

Acosta-Conniff v. ECMC, 536 B.R. 326 (Bankr. M.D. Ala. 2015)

Ronald Joe Johnson, a grandfather in his early 50s who took out student loans in the early 1990s to pursue a college degree he was unable to complete and is now living with his wife on about $2,000 a month. Unfortunately, Johnson did not have a lawyer, and the Department of Education persuaded a bankruptcy judge not to discharge Johnson's student loans. 

Johnson v. U.S. Department of Education541 B.R. 759 (N.D. Ala. 2015)

Michael Abney, a single father of two with a record of homelessness who is living on less than $1200 a month, in spite of the fact he is working fulltime as a delivery driver. Acting as his own attorney, he defeated the U.S. Department of Education in a Missouri bankruptcy court.

Abney v. U.S. Department of Education540 B.R. 681 (W.D. Mo. 2015)

All these people are heroes, as brave in their own way as the farmers who defied the British army on Concord bridge in 1775, as brave as the heroes of the Alamo, as brave as the Okies who were driven off their farms during the Great Depression and took their families to Oklahoma in search of a better life.

Let us hope these heroes will inspire others to take the brave step of going into the bankruptcy courts to throw off their student-loan debt.  With each pasisng months, the bankruptcy courts are growing more sympathetic. 

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Racist hiring at the University of Louisville: Does it matter?

 The University of Louisville got caught this week by openly doing what most universities are doing surreptitiously: hiring faculty member based on race.  Through some incredible slip up at the University's human resources office, the Department of Physics and Astronomy posted a job that contained this language:
The Department of Physics and Astronomy announces a tenure-track assistant professor position that will be filled by an African-American, Hispanic American or a Native American Indian [sic].
 Let's give the University of Louisville credit for at least being honest. Most American universities, both public and private, now take race into account when hiring faculty and admitting students. In fact, in Gratz v. Bollinger, one of the Supreme Court's seminal opinions on affirmative action, Justice Ruth Ginsburg argued in a dissenting opinion that the courts should allow universities to admit students based on race because they will do it anyway, even if the Supreme Court rules that it is a constitutional violation. Let them do it openly, Ginsburg counseled, rather than force them do it with winks and subterfuge.

So what difference does it make if the University of Louisville decides that whites and Asians are not eligible for a faculty position in the Physics Department? On one level, it's no big deal.

Twenty-five years go, when I was a doctoral student at Harvard Graduate School of Education, it was well known that only minority students would be admitted to the staff of the Harvard Educational Review. In fact, one faculty member told me candidly that the Harvard Educational Review was "a racial ghetto."  I applied, and I was not selected.

But being rejected by the Harvard Educational Review had no major impact on my life. I feel quite confident that I have published more scholarly work than all the students in my HGSE doctoral cohort put together--certainly more than all the students who were on the Harvard Educational Review when I was at Harvard.

Likewise, the whites and Asians who won't be hired for a Physics professor's position at the University of Louisville will probably find other jobs.

And certainly, greater diversity on America's college campuses is good thing.  We need more African American and Hispanic professors, and we need more minority students.

But here's the thing. Academia's obsession with race, gender and sexual orientation has diminished higher education as a moral enterprise.

First of all, most racial and gender preferences are done dishonestly. The University of Louisville goofed when it said in print that whites and Asians would not be considered for a particular faculty position. In fact, a university spokesperson said the job advertisement was an "error" and muttered some gobbledygook about the university's commitment to diversity. But in fact, at least some people at the University of Louisville wanted to make a hiring decision based on race. You can call that diversity if you want, but that's racism.

And this dishonesty has permeated every aspect of American higher education. The universities are dishonest about their racism, dishonest about their tuition prices, and many are dishonest about the employment prospects of their graduates.

Moreover, this morbid obsession with race is eroding the rigor of higher education. Just last year, students at three prestigious law schools--Harvard, Columbia and Georgetown-- asked to postpone their examinations because they were so upset about the racially charged shooting death of an African American in Ferguson, Missouri that they couldn't study for their exams.
Think about that. People trained at our top law schools are so sensitive that they can't do their school work because they are upset by current events. Who would want to hire a lawyer who gets the vapors from reading the morning newspaper?

And occasionally, racial fixations at our elite universities have become downright embarrassing. Awhile back, Harvard Law School claimed to have a Native American on its faculty. A real live Indian! And who did that Indian turn out to be? Elizabeth Warren, who said vaguely that she thought her grandmother might have been a Cherokee!

Who cares, in an authentic academic environment, whether a law professor is one sixteenth Cherokee? The fact that Harvard Law School thought it was legitimate to claim it had a Native American faculty member based on Elizabeth Warren's unverified assertions tells you all you need to know about the intellectual and moral rigor of Harvard Law School.

Eventually, young Americans are going to ask themselves why they bother to enroll in these flim-flam shops--these palaces of hot air that obsess on race and blather about academic freedom while charging outrageous tuition prices that most people can't pay without taking out student loans.

Elizabeth Warren:
I think I am a Cherokee Indian


References


Philip Marcelo. Law Schools Delay Exams For Students Upset by Ferguson, Eric Garner Decisions. Huffington Post, December 10, 2014. accessible at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/10/law-schools-exams-ferguson_n_6301282.html




Monday, May 11, 2015

Senator Elizabeth Warren and the Brookings Institution's Matthew Chingos are ignoring reality: The federal government is not making a profit off the student-loan program

Do you believe the federal government is making a profit off the student loan program? You do? Then I have some beautiful beachfront property in southwestern Oklahoma I would like to sell you. That's right--Caddo County, Oklahoma is going to be the next Hamptons! 


Caddo County, Oklahoma in springtime
Beachfront lots are still available!
Uncle Sam is not making a profit on student loans

Some people actually believe that Uncle Sam is making a bundle off the federal student loan program. Senator Elizabeth Warren is of that mind. She once said that the government's profits from the student-loan program are "obscene."


And last February, Senator Warren and five other U.S. Senators wrote Secretary of Education Arne Duncan a scolding letter charging the Department of Education with making a profit off of student loans. The Senators accused the government of overcharging student borrowers and "pocketing the profits to spend on unrelated government activities."


Senator Elizabeth Warren: Government profits on student loans are "obscene"
And apparently, the policy wonks over at the Brookings Institution also think the student loan program is producing a profit for the federal government. Matthew Chingos recently published a Brookings paper proposing to significantly lower interest rates on student loans while assessing student borrowers a fee that would be placed in a "guarantee fund" to cover student loan defaults. Chingos argued that his plan would keep the government from profiting from student loans while having a contingency fund to cover the cost of defaults.

Theoretically (and only theoretically), the government is making a profit on student loans.  The government's cost for borrowing money is about 1.9 percent on ten-year Treasury Bonds . And the government is currently loaning money to undergraduate students at a 4.7 percent interest rate. If all students paid back their loans, the government would indeed make a handsome profit.

But, as everyone knows, a high percentage of students are defaulting on their loans. According to Chingos, the government estimates only 0.6 percent of students will default, but of course that is absurd. Every year, for the past 20 years, the Department of Education has been issuing reports on the percentage of students in the most recent cohort of borrowers who default within two years of beginning the repayment phase of their loan. Over that period, that number has never been lower than about 5 percent. Last year, the figure was 10 percent--16 times higher than the DOE default estimate that Chingos cited.

In a Forbes.com article, Jason Delisle and Clare McCann reported that the government estimates that about 20 percent of student-loan borrowers will eventually default on their loans--that's 30 times higher than the rate cited by Chingos.

And let's not forget A Closer Look at the Trillion, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 2013 report on the federal student loan program.   CFPB reported that 6.5 million out of 50 million outstanding student loans were in default--13 percent.


Need more data? The Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued its most recent report on household debt in February 2015. The Bank found student loan delinquency rates worsened in the 4th quarter of 2014, with 11.3 percent of aggregate student-loan debt being 90 days delinquent or in default.(up from 11.1 percent in the previous quarter).

Just one more tidbit of information. The Department of Education recently admitted that more than half of the student-loan borrowers who were signed up for income-based repayment plans, the government's most generous loan-payment option, had dropped out due to failure to file their annual personal income reports on time.  That is a clear sign that many student-loan borrowers are so discouraged that they aren't bothering to file the necessary paperwork to keep their loan status in good standing.

The Chingos Report and Senator Elizabeth's Letter to Secretary Duncan Ignore Reality

I am astonished that Michael Chingos and Senator Warren would publicly state that the government is making a profit off the student-loan program when it so clearly losing money. What's going on?

Tragically, our politicians and policy analysts simply can't face the fact that the student-loan program is out of control. It is so much easier to demand a pseudo reform based on the fantasy that the government is making money off the student loan program than to face reality.

References

Chingos, Matthew M. End government profits on student loans: Shift risk and lower interest rates. Brookings Institution, April 30, 2015. Accessible at: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/04/30-government-profit-loans-chingos

Rohit Chopra. A closer look at the trillion. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, August 5, 2013.  Accessible at: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/blog/a-closer-look-at-the-trillion/

Jason Delisle and Clare McCann. Who's Not Repaying Student Loans? More People Than You Think. Forbes.com, September 26, 2014. Accessible at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasondelisle/2014/09/26/whos-not-repaying-student-loans-more-people-than-you-think/?utm_content=buffer1e0e0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffe

Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit: February 2015. Accessible at: http://www.newyorkfed.org/householdcredit/2014-q4/data/pdf/HHDC_2014Q4.pdf

Senator Elizabeth Warren, et. al to Arne Duncan, February 25, 2015. Accessible at: http://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/2015_25_02_Letter_to_Secretary_Duncan_re_Student_Loan_Profits.pdf

Monday, April 28, 2014

David Leonhardt says it's harder and harder to get into Harvard University: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!"

David Leonhardt wrote an essay in the Sunday issue of the New York Times about how hard it is these days for someone get admitted to an Ivy League college--particularly if the applicant is an American. In 1994, Leonhardt wrote, about 45 college-age Americans out of every 100,000 were attending Harvard.  In 2012, that number dropped to just 33 out of every 100,000.

David Leonhardt
At the same time, the number of foreign students attending our nation's most elite institutions is growing. According to Leonhardt, about 10 percent of the student body at many of the nation's most selective colleges are foreigners.

Why are our elite institutions admitting more foreign students?  Because they can pay the full freight of tuition, room and board without the need for grants or scholarships In other words, foreign students from wealthy families are an important revenue source for America's most prestigious colleges and universities.

Leonhardt's essay appeared just a few days after Evan Mandery published an article in the Times deploring the fact that the nation's most elite institutions give admission preferences to the children of their alumni.  Mandery said that legacies have a big edge in the admissions process similar to the edge given to African Americans, Hispanics, and varsity athletes.

Take together, Leonhardt's essay and Mandery's essay convey a very clear message. If you want to go to an Ivy League college or a handful of other selective institutions it will help you if you are Hispanic, African American, the child of an alumnus, a varsity athlete or a wealthy foreigner.  And as Leonhardt pointed out, a "large fraction" of students from all these categories come from high-income families.

I could not tell whether Leonhardt was critical of this trend or a supporter.  Like so many New York Times op ed essays, Leonhardt's article wallows in cryptic indecision.  Leonhardt concludes his essay with these lines: "[T]hese [elite] schools have become a patchwork of diversity--gender, race, religion, and now geography. Underneath the surface, though, that patchwork still has some common threads." 

I have no idea what that means.

I do know that white male Southerners and Midwesterners who come from low-income families have very little chance of being admitted to an Ivy League school.  But so what?  Why would anyone who grew up living in the real world want to enter a higher education environment in which admission decisions are based--even in part--on race and greed? 

In my opinion, young people who want to expand their horizons by going to college should skip the elitist institutions--Harvard, Yale, Emory, Brown, etc. etc.  Instead, they should consider studying outside the United States.  Why not attend college in Monterrey or Guadalajara, for example?  Even if the educational experience is unexceptional, Americans studying in Mexico will learn an important second language and immerse themselves in another culture.

As it happened, Leonhardt's essay appeared in the same issue of the Times as an article about  Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law professor and now U.S. Senator.   Warren has been critical of the federal government for regulating the finance industry in a way that favors Wall Street. "The game is rigged," Warren was quoted as saying, "and the American people know it."

Warren is right of course, but it is not only Wall Street that has rigged the game against the American people. Our elite colleges and universities have rigged the game as well.  It is no accident that Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard, has also been a hedge fund manager and was one of President Obama's top economic advisers.

Warren quotes Summers as telling her she could be an outsider or an insider, and Warren obviously portrays herself as an outsider and friend of the little guy.  And maybe she is.  But we should not forget that Warren advanced herself in the world of academia by portraying herself as being part Native American--specifically a Cherokee--when in fact she almost certainlyis  not.

And so I repeat my question. Why would anyone want to attend an elite college where a person's advancement can be enhanced by the fact that he or she might have a trace of Native American blood?

Yes indeed, Elizabeth. The game is rigged.

"The game is rigged."


References

David Leonhardt. Getting Into the Ivies. New York Times, April 27, 2014, Sunday Review Section, p. 1.

Gretchen Morgenson. From Outside or Inside, the Deck Looks Stacked. New York Times, April 27, 2014, Sunday Business Section, p. 1.







Wednesday, November 20, 2013

President Obama Did Not Tell the Truth About the Affordable Care Act: Where Was the President Educated?

Justice Ruth Ginsburg
It's OK to scam the rubes (wink!)
In Gratz v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court overturned an affirmative action program at the University of Michigan that used a point system to benefit minority applicants to the university.  In the majority opinion's view, the University of Michigan had unlawfully discriminated against white applicants in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

In a remarkable display of cynicism, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented. She argued that the Court should allow American universities to discriminate based on race because they would do it anyway, even if they had to lie about it.

Here is what she said:
One can reasonably anticipate . . . that colleges and universities will seek to maintain their minority enrollment--and the networks and opportunities thereby opened to minority graduates--whether or not they can do so in full candor through adoption of affirmative action plans of the kind here at issue. Without recourse to such plans, institutions of higher education may resort to camouflage. . . . If honesty is the best policy, surely Michigan's accurately described, fully disclosed College affirmative action program is preferable to achieving similar numbers through winks, nods, and disguises. (emphasis supplied)
What an astonishing thing for a Supreme Court Justice to write. In her view, college administrators are so lacking in integrity that they will lie in order to achieve their desired social goals, even if their tactics violate the law.

And Justice Ginsburg did not condemn such behavior. Implicitly at least, Justice Ginsburg endorsed the view that the end justifies the means.  Affirmative action is so worthwhile, she apparently believes, that it is OK for college officials to engage in subterfuge--to camouflage their activities, to advance their goals through "winks, nods, and disguises."

President Obama, we now know, shares Justice Ginsburg's views about honesty. Universal health care is such a good thing, he believes, that it is permissible to lie repeatedly about how the new health care law actually works.

I'm part Cherokee (wink!)
Where did Justice Ginsburg and President Obama develop such cynical views about honesty and the law? Well they were both educated at Harvard Law School and both served on the Harvard Law Review. (Justice Ginsburg transferred from Harvard to Columbia Law School before she graduated.) Perhaps Harvard infected them with the elitist view that it is OK to scam the rubes.  After all, it is the elites--people like Ruth and Barack--who know what is best for people.

And if a Harvard Law Professor (Elizabeth Warren) wants to claim she's an American Indian, that's OK too. It is important for Harvard to claim it has a Native American law professor, whether or not it's true.

Harvard's motto is Veritas--the Latin word for truth.  In light of the leaders Harvard has produced in recent years, perhaps its motto should be tweaked a bit.  How about "Veritas (wink)".



Veritas (wink!)

References

Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003).



Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Things Universities Don't Want to Talk About: It's Time for a Freedom of Information Act for American Colleges That Participate in the Federal Student Loan Program

LSU President King Alexander recently told a Rotary Club audience that the cost of attending Louisiana State University is very reasonable.  For the many students who receive one of Louisiana's TOPS scholarship, the cost is only about $1,000 a year for housing and other costs, according to President Alexander.
LSU President King Alexander:
It only costs a TOPS student a thousand bucks a year to attend LSU.  Really?
But that's not accurate. In a letter to the editor of the Baton Rouge Advocate, Elizabeth Welsh, a Baton Rouge homemaker, corrected LSU's president.  The true cost for a TOPS student attending LSU is between $2,000 and $3,000 per semester, Welsh pointed out--at least four times President Alexander's figure. 

How did Ms. Welsh figure out Alexander's numbers were wrong? By drawing on her family's own experience with a child in college and by looking at housing costs posted online at LSU's web site.

President Alexander's recent misstatement is just another example of the modern university's tendency to hide the truth.  LSU, after all, is the same university that refuses to disclose the names of people who applied for the LSU president's job that Alexander now holds.

Some more examples? George Washington University recently admitted that it had not told the truth when it represented that it had a needs-blind admission policy.  Sorry about that.

UC Davis refused to explain the circumstances under which Lieutenant John Pike, the guy who pepper-sprayed non-offending students in November,2011, left university employment.  Was he fired? Did UC Davis pay him off? Who knows? UC Davis won't talk.

And then there's Ohio State University, which was embarrassed to disclose how much it was paying OSU President Gordon Gee.  It took an Ohio newspaper about a year to pry that information out of the university after it filed a Freedom of Information request.

And remember Harvard Law School's refusal a few years ago to disclose which of its professors was a Native American, although it represented that one faculty member was an Indian? Why the reticence? I suspect it was because it was counting Professor Elizabeth Warren as a Native American, when in fact she is not.  Oops!

Finally, there's the College Board, which speaks for higher education in general.  In a report issued earlier this month, it actually represented that the cost of attending a private nonprofit college had  gone down over the past ten years, in spite of the fact that tuition at a private college has gone up almost every year for the past 30 years.

How did the College Board justify that whopper?  By distinguishing between the sticker price of attending college (going up) and the so-called net price, which the College Board said has gone down a bit after tax benefits, grants, scholarships, and inflation are taken into account. Of course not every student gets those scholarships, grants, and tax breaks.  You--Mr. and Ms. sucker--are probably paying the sticker price.

Why do colleges and their constituent organizations continually hide the facts about their activities? Two reasons.  First, they are accountable to no one and don't care if they get caught in a misstatement or an embarrassing activity. Do you think King Alexander cares about being corrected by a Baton Rouge homemaker?

Second, the upper echelons of American higher education are contemptuous of the American people.  Like Colonel Jessup who screamed "You can't handle the truth!" in A Few Good Men, they don't think Americans deserve to know the facts about the way their universities are being run.

That's why we need a federal Freedom of Information Act that requires all colleges and universities receiving federal funds to publicly disclose a whole range of their activities including the way they choose their executive leaders, their affirmative action practices, their admissions policies, and the way they distribute scholarships and student aid.

Until they are required by law to do so, American universities will continue to behave like Lois Lerner, the IRS administrator who assured Congress she had nothing wrong and then took the Fifth Amendment.
 
Lois Lerner of IRS
Not taking any questions

References

Koran Addo. LSU President calls for reinvestment in higher education. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, October 17, 2013. Accessible at: http://theadvocate.com/home/7336360-125/lsu-president-calls-for-reinvestment

Elizabeth Welsh. LSU cost numbers don't add up. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, October 29, 2013, p. 8B.

 

Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Controversy Over Elizabeth Warren’s Native American Ancestry: Warren and Harvard Should be Embarrassed


I have long admired Elizabeth Warren. As a person who grew up in Oklahoma, I am impressed that Warren rose from humble beginnings in Norman, Oklahoma to become a Harvard Law Professor.  I also admire her work in bankruptcy law and consumer-protection law.
Thus, I was greatly disappointed to read that Warren listed herself as a minority as she was advancing her academic career based on the fact that she is 1/32nd Native American.
Elizabeth Warren
Source: Harvard Law School
OTnline Directory
Not all the facts of this hullabaloo are known, but we do know that Harvard Law School touted Warren as a Native American law professor in 1996.  And, according to a Boston Herald story, she listed herself as a minority in a law school directory from 1986 until 1995.
If Warren is embarrassed by this controversy, she should be.  And Harvard Law School should be even more embarrassed.  Currently, Harvard Law School claims to have one Native American faculty member but won’t say who it is.  If it is not Elizabeth Warren, then who  is it?  Do you think it might be Alan Dershowitz?
Why is this controversy significant for student-loan borrowers? Students have seen their tuition go up every year while they borrow more and more money to finance their educations. Meanwhile, universities--and particularly,the nation's elite universities--have obsessed on race. Harvard Law School apparently thinks it struck a blow for equity by counting Elizabeth Warren as a Native American because her great great great grandmother was a Cherokee. What would higher education look like in this country if Harvard and other elite universities focused on substantive issues of access and equity instead of fixating on race.


References

Chabot, H. (2012, April 27).Harvard trips on roots of Elizabeth Warrant’s family tree. Boston Herald. http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20220427harvard_trips_on_roots_of_warrens_family_tree_officials_touted_her_native_american_lineage

Chabot, H. (2012, May 4). Harvard won’t say if Liz Warren is listed as minority. Boston Herald. http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20220504harvard_wont_say_if_liz_listed_as_minority