Obama education pick sparks conflict

Prior to his appointment to Chancellor in 2002 <2> by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Klein was Counsel to Bertelsmann and served as United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In this capacity, he was the lead prosecutor in the antitrust case United States v. Microsoft. Before heading the Antitrust Division, Klein was the deputy to Anne Bingaman (the wife of Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico) in that office, and worked in the White House Counsel's office. He was in private practice for many years, specializing in appellate cases. Klein received his B.A. from Columbia and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He served as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. Klein is married to Nicole Seligman, General Counsel to Howard Stringer of Sony Corp. Seligman represented former President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings in the United States Senate. Klein is rumored to aspire to succeed Bloomberg as Mayor of the City of New York.

In 1998, before Klein became Chancellor, the New York City Board of Education transferred responsibility for school safety to the New York City Police Department.<7> Klein has been criticized for not seeking to alter this arrangement or to curb the conduct of the Police Department's school safety agents in the face of allegations of abuse.<8><7> Klein has praised the work of the school safety agents in contributing to a decrease in crime in the public schools.<9>

Joel Klein fired Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi from the NYC teacher training program, because of Khalidi's political views<10>. Controversy erupted over Klein's decision to limit academic freedom and fire a renowned middle east scholar on the basis he was not pro-Israel. After the controversial decision, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger spoke out on Khalidi's behalf, writing: "The department's decision to dismiss Professor Khalidi from the program was wrong and violates First Amendment principles... The decision was based solely on his purported political views and was made without any consultation and apparently without any review of the facts."<10> The program's creator Mark Willner stated that (Khalidi) "He spoke on geography and demography," and that "There was nothing controversial, nothing political."<10>