WASHINGTON — Russlynn Ali wasn’t quite sure what to expect when President Obama appointed her civil rights chief for the Department of Education. After all, the once high-profile agency had more recently been in a low-profile mode when the president took office in 2009. Ali was a passionate activist in California helping champion educational equity for minorities.
Today, as Ali approaches her third year working as assistant secretary for civil rights, she says she’s found Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan supportive of her efforts to recharge the agenda of the Office of Civil Rights.
“There’s never been a conversation about go slower,” says Ali, who brought the same energy and passion to the national education stage that characterized her career in California as an advocate for equity in educational opportunities for children. “By every indication, we’re doing what the law says do,” she adds, carefully acknowledging some of her compliance initiatives may have ruffled the feathers of some local and state officials whose schools have drawn her office’s attention for one reason or another.
A District of Columbia native, Ali grew up in nearby Prince George’s County, Md. Ali attended Spelman College, earned her undergraduate degree from American University and earned a law degree from Northwestern University. She is far from being a household name across the higher education landscape. Still, her fingerprints seem all over the place.
Since taking office, Ali and her recharged staff have been working through a backlog of several thousand complaints that run the gamut of possible civil rights violations by educational institutions that receive federal funds. They range from complaints of alleged discrimination against those with disabilities to complaints about the alleged lack of educational opportunities for underprepared K-12 students to Title IX complaints challenging how colleges are handling women’s sports programs.
Also, Ali has initiated compliance reviews focusing on possible inequities in educational opportunities for students at specific schools and in a variety of school districts, including Los Angeles and Boston. She has stepped up efforts, with some success, to resolve outstanding compliance complaints.
Most recently, Ali’s office has initiated an investigation of Penn State University “to determine whether the university has failed to comply” with federal law. The Clery Act, as the law is known, requires schools participating in federal financial aid programs to keep and make public campus crime statistics and campus security information. The law was named after Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old freshman at Lehigh University who was raped and murdered in 1986 in her dormitory room.
