President Joe Biden’s public promise to diversify the Supreme Court is getting attention, but his quiet effort to diversify another opaque and influential federal institution is getting results.
Biden’s three nominees to the Federal Reserve will bring an unprecedented level of diversity to the central bank. If Sarah Bloom Raskin, Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson all join the Fed’s board of governors, which is more likely than not, then it will have the highest-ever number of Black members and the highest-ever number of women — including, in Cook, the first Black woman.
Change rarely comes without controversy, of course. Raskin, who was confirmed unanimously by the Senate for two different jobs during Barack Obama’s presidency, is now in some hot water over a misguided op-ed she wrote in May 2020 taking issue with fossil fuel companies’ eligibility for emergency economic support. And Cook was forced to defend her academic record last week to a senator who had apparently read some anonymous criticism of it online. These criticisms look (and are) fundamentally ridiculous to any fair-minded person.
