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.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
