For months, numerous university faculty members and administrators have been serving on policy working groups for President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. And Law Center Dean Alex Aleinikoff, law professor Daniel Tarullo and visiting professor Tom Daschle were tapped to lead three of those groups.

Aleinikoff has worked in government before and even assisted in briefing former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno for her confirmation during the 1990s, but this marks the first time the immigration policy expert has led a presidential transition working group.

“I’ve been particularly impressed across the board with the people I have dealt with on the transition team – their seriousness of purpose and how talented they are,” said Aleinikoff, who has written extensively on immigration, refugee and citizenship law and constitutional law.

Aleinikoff leads the immigration policy working group with Stanford Law School professor Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar.

The Law Center dean and his team are tackling immigration issues and concerns, which include whether there is a need for more effective law enforcement at America’s borders and work sites, whether undocumented workers in the United States should be legalized and what the best handling of the asylum process may be.

Aleinikoff has served as Law Center dean and executive vice president of Georgetown since July 2004. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty in 1997, he served as general counsel and executive associate commissioner for programs at the Immigration and Naturalization Service for several years during the Clinton Administration. From 1997 to 2004, he worked as a senior associate at the Migration Policy Institute, where he now serves on the board of trustees.

In addition to appointing Aleinikoff to lead a working group, the Obama transition team made another Law Center pick, naming Tarullo to chair the economic policy working group. Daschle was selected to lead the health care policy working group. 

Tarullo, who teaches and writes in the areas of banking law, international economic regulation and economic policymaking, served as assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, deputy assistant to President Clinton for economic policy and assistant to President Clinton for international economic policy. From 1995 to 1998 he was also Clinton’s personal representative to the G7/G8 group of industrialized nations.

Obama named Tarullo to an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors last month, and Daschle was tapped for the secretary of health and human services post – one of Obama’s first cabinet nominations.

In addition to teaching in the Georgetown Public Policy Institute (GPPI)  as a visiting professor, Daschle is an advisor to the law firm of Alston & Bird where he provides strategic advice on public policy issues such as climate change, energy, health care, trade, financial services and telecommunications. He is also a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Progress.

As a former U.S. senator, Daschle is one of the longest serving Senate democratic leaders in history and the only one to serve twice as both majority and minority leader.

Aleinikoff lauded the Obama team for putting together “an extraordinarily talented group of people.”

“This is a president who asked a Nobel Prize winner to join the cabinet, and the Nobel Prize winner said ‘yes,’ ” he said. “That tells you something about the president-elect’s commitment.”

Aleinikoff said serving on the transition team has required working early in the morning, late at night and on weekends, but it’s well worth the work.

“It’s something that I’m happy to do,” he said.

-- Nia Hightower, Blue & Gray Editor

(January 12, 2009)