EMBOLDENING CITIZENS AND LEADERS TO STAND UP FOR OUR FUTURE September 6, 2010 
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Position: Secretary

The U.S. Department of Education establishes policy for, administers, and coordinates most federal assistance to education. It assists the president in executing his or her education policies for the nation and in implementing laws enacted by Congress. The department's mission is to serve U.S. students, to ensure that all have equal access to education, and to promote excellence in the nation's public schools. It is the job of the secretary to see that these missions are carried out effectively. The secretary is responsible for ensuring that this happens.

Type of Appointment/Position: Presidential with Senate confirmation    

To research this nominee, please look for them on at the Progressive Government Institute website and Google.

bell hooks   Current Rating: click to rate
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Nominee's Background:

bell hooks (nee Gloria Watkins) is Distinguished Professor of English at City College in New York. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1952, hooks, received her B.A. from Stanford University in 1973, her M.A. in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin and her Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Although hooks is mainly known as a feminist thinker, her writings cover a broad range of topics on gender, race, teaching and the significance of media for contemporary culture. She strongly believes that these topics cannot be dealt with as separately, but must be understood as being interconnectedness. As an example, she refers to the idea of a "White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy" and its interconnectedness, rather than to its more traditionally separated and component parts.

A passionate scholar, hooks is among the leading public intellectuals of her generation.

hooks/Watson's use of a pseudonym is intended to honor both her grandmother (whose name she took) and her mother, as well as provide her the opportunity to establish a separate voice from the person Gloria Watson.

hooks, like Paulo Freire, sees education as the practice of freedom. Profoundly influenced by Freire, she sees his ideas as affirming her "right as a subject in resistance to define reality." (Teaching to Trangress , p. 53).

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