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Brady Dennis, the Washington Post’s all-things-Elizabeth-Warren beat reporter, notices a change in the Harvard Law professor’s class schedule:
When fall classes began Wednesday at Harvard Law School, Elizabeth Warren was scheduled to be teaching contract law to first-year students. But something happened on the way to the chalkboard.
“I’m writing to let you know that Professor Jerry Frug will be teaching your Contracts class this term instead of Professor Elizabeth Warren,” law school dean Martha Minow wrote to students on Tuesday, according to an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post. “Professor Warren regrets that she will not be able to teach you this fall and we regret the last minute change.”
Last-minute change?
Cue up another round of speculation about whether President Obama is about to tap Warren to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.
Even more interesting is the fact that Jerry Frug doesn’t appear to specialize in contract law, at least not in the way that Warren does. He’s more of a local government law expert, and while that intersects, it’s not precise. That adds to the last-minute nature of this change.
According to Harvard’s class schedule, Warren is still slated to teach other classes three days a week, something that wouldn’t be possible if she ran the CFPB. But it would be possible if she simply were the nominee of the CFPB, without getting a directorship appointment from either the Treasury Department (which can be done without Senate approval) or the White House (in a recess appointment).
I don’t know that the last-minute pullout means much of anything, actually, but given the dearth of information around this appointment, let’s say it’s more meaningful than anything else.
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D-Day:
As long as we’re speculating, what possible reason could the WH have for prolonging this thing? I just can’t see it, but what do I know?
I read on another site that Warren was working behind the scenes drumming up support. I hope so, and I hope she succeeds.
If Obama wanted her he would have already nominated her, recess appointment or not. The reason for the big stall is to give duds like Dodd time to sabotage her appointment.
Lieberman – HCR
Dodd – Warren appointment
Simpson – SS
The hoodwinking continues.
David, I think your question on the “other classes” is the key; at least for now anyway. Any law professor dope can teach 1L Contracts, it is butt ass simplistic stuff and you just follow the textbook; however, it is time intensive and requiring preparation for each day’s lecture and class activity. The key is the status of the “other classes three days a week” she is still apparently slated to teach. The Contracts class on top of those just may have been too much considering she does still have the oversight position and there is some chance on CFPB. But until the other classes are scrubbed of Warren too, I don’t think too much should be taken of this.
However, contract law is clearly Warren’s passion.
I tried to figure out the status of the other classes, but it was quite difficult to find them on the Harvard Law public website.
True. Usually one big first year lecture section (like Contracts) would be coupled with one or two smaller 2L or 3L classes or seminar type offerings for a professor. They would be easier to substitute someone in mid-stream, so maybe she was just making sure she didn’t really screw up the school on a huge lecture section in the eventuality she gets a nomination. Who knows? It is a very interesting development; I just don’t know what to make of it yet.
Bruce Dixon has a fresh cross-post ready: What’s More Important For Black Leadership? Turning Off Fox News? Or Stopping the President’s Cat Food Commission?
Didn’t Katrina VandenHeuvel tweet that the White House told her Warren was to be appointed “next week?”
That was three weeks ago:
http://twitter.com/KatrinaNation/status/20760409611
Sometimes signals get mixed up when passing through the thick steel and glass of Katrina’s limousine.
With Obama, and his Administrations track record fighting for his nominees, were I were Warren, I’d keep my day job. Even if she were unlucky enough to get confirmation, Geithner plans to eviscerate the office could make the post meaningless, except that Warren would have a bully pulpit.
I had an argument with someone online several weeks ago who takes the “I trust the Administration” stance on every issue, and insisted that all this criticism coming from the Professional Left is both unwarranted and counterproductive. At the time, it was about the PL helping to get the Warren nomination into the public discourse and pressuring the Admin to follow through on appointing her (and not undercutting the position, but that’s another story). What I guarantee will happen is that, should she eventually be named by Obama, what that person will say is “See, I told you they would do the right thing; all your criticism was simply being negative.” The notion that their doing the right thing on this or any other issue might well be *because* of the intense and very public pressure will never be accepted.
Didn’t Dawn Johnsen also give up a couple semesters of teaching while she waited?
It is exactly this *logic* that you will see on display as The Professional Left is blamed for historic Democratic losses in Congress this November.
Look at the good side: if she leaves Harvard and doesn’t get the CFPB post, she can start grass roots organizing for a primary challenge to Barackarahma n 2012.
I call that a win-win.
Yep. The fleeing independent vote will be the true culprit yet Dem lore will be that it was caused by the petulant prof-left.
Obama could have ordered Geithner to appoint her acting director the day of the bill signing and if the Senate hadn’t moved on her permanent nomination by January, recess appoint her. A 2011 appointment would be good through the end of 2012.
Obama’s team has no concept of the importance of staying inside their opposition’s OODA loop (“the pilot must think and act faster than the opponent can think and act. Getting “inside” the cycle—short-circuiting the opponent’s thinking processes— produces opportunities for the opponent to react inappropriately”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
Its painful to watch, On issue after issue, the President wastes time and gives his opposition time to marshal their forces. The most obvious example, of course, was refusing to move HCR last summer with a reconciliation bill. The bill would have been signed prior to the August recess (Clinton’s and W.’s first year reconciliation bills were signed in August and June respectively). But that wouldn’t have been fair to the teabaggers and Republicans who still needed more time to dig trenches and lay barbed wire.
Obama’s team could learn from a fellow who understood OODA loops, Karl Rove. Apparently he was the Bush aide who told Ron Suskind…
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out…
Spot on comment.——–As David noted if “she simply were the nominee of the CFPB, without getting a directorship appointment from either the Treasury Department (which can be done without Senate approval) or the White House (in a recess appointment)” that would fit the schedule change. I believe that is the BEST we can expect from Obama – that we get a few moments before he and the Dems sell out to the rich and corporate.
O that Elizabeth Warren does not crash and burn! Let her be pure of heart and brave and so forth. And not neutralized, compromised, marginalised or otherise fucked by geitrahmsummersbama.