Obama transition teams draw on Stanford scholars

As president-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office, his transition teams are drawing on several Stanford scholars to help shape the policies and ideas of his administration.

Obama has chosen Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, as the leader of his education policy working group. Darling-Hammond, who also has been mentioned as a possible education secretary for Obama, focuses on school reform, teaching quality and educational equity.

Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, a professor of law, was tapped to head a working group on immigration policy. Cuellar worked in the Treasury Department under the Clinton administration and is an expert on how organizations manage complex regulatory, migration, international security and criminal justice problems.

Peter Blair Henry, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Economics, has been named leader of an economics team reviewing international lending agencies.

Two professors will be working on national security issues.

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a senior research scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies’ Center for International Security and Cooperation, sits on the national security review team focusing on the Department of Defense. And political science Professor Michael McFaul, director of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, is on a working group addressing national security policy. McFaul, who is also the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, was a chief adviser on Russia and Eurasia to Obama’s campaign.

The working groups develop policy proposals for the new administration, and the review teams are responsible for making sure that senior appointees have the information they need to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments and begin implementing policy initiatives as soon as they are sworn in.

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