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Saudi Arabian student attending the University of North Dakota was
assaulted in a bar last week, apparently because of his ethnicity.
It's the sort of incident the Department of Education's Office of
Civil Rights might want to investigate — except that OCR currently
has nobody at its helm, because Senate Democrats won't give a hearing
to Gerald Reynolds, President Bush's nominee for the post.
Although OCR
currently monitors reports of discrimination and tries to carry
out its mandate, no organization can work at maximum effectiveness
when it lacks a leader. Reports about anti-Arab discrimination in
the United States are often overblown, but it's impossible to deny
that many innocent Arab-Americans now face difficulties they did
not encounter prior to September 11. OCR has a clear role to play
in cases where genuine discrimination exists, and where federal
laws covering K-12 schools and college campuses have been violated.
Yet it won't perform its job as well as possible while Reynolds
languishes.
When Bush announced
his intention to nominate Reynolds, civil-rights groups raised objections
to him because they can't tolerate the idea of someone who has criticized
racial preferences occupying one of the federal government's most
important civil-rights jobs. They also have gone after Reynolds
on Title IX grounds, even though Reynolds seems never to have written
a world on the subject. (For more on this, read our Washington
Bulletin from last July.)
Almost the
entire political class has declared that combatting discrimination
against Arabs is a national priority. As long as Senate Democrats
delay consideration of Reynolds, their words to that effect will
ring hollow.
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