Obama reportedly courting Emanuel, Summers Two prominent Jews reportedly are among Barack Obama’s choices for top positions in his administration.
According to multiple reports, U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) is considering a job as White House chief of staff. Emanuel, 49, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, is his party’s caucus chairman. He was re-elected Tuesday.
Emanuel, considered a top political strategist, masterminded the Democrats resumption of power in Congress in 2006. He was a political adviser to the Clinton White House.
Lawrence Summers reportedly is likely to get a second turn as U.S. Treasury secretary, a post he held in the last two years of the Clinton administration. In the interim he served a controversial tenure as president of Harvard University, resigning in 2006. Four years earlier, Summers had slammed anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment on campuses.
Summers, 54, had testy relations with black faculty, but the incident that led to his resignation was his suggestion in a speech that biological differences helped explain why men were more pre-eminent in the sciences than women. His defenses, however, included other sweeping generalizations — one remark was about the paucity of Jewish farmers.
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