Emma Brown of the Washington Post reports that Candice E. Jackson will serve as acting assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education.

Brown notes that Jackson “aided Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign by highlighting Hillary Clinton’s role in defending a man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl.” Jackson is also the author of a book Their Lives: Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine.

Brown writes

Under President Barack Obama, the Office for Civil Rights’ aggressive investigations of complaints — and its guidance to schools on issues such as sexual violence and transgender student accommodations — made it a champion of the left and a target of the right. Civil rights advocates, worried that Trump might shrink the office, have been watching closely to see who is tapped to lead it.

Earlier this month, Education Next published “How Civil Rights Enforcement Got Swept into the Culture Wars and What a New Administration Can Do About It,” by Shep Melnick.

Shep Melnick discusses the role of the Office for Civil Rights in the most recent episode of the EdNext podcast.

— Education Next