Michigan State Promoted Fed Nominee Lisa Cook over Colleagues' Objections

The Michigan State Interim Provost and President promoted in 2020 Dr. Lisa Cook, now a Federal Reserve nominee, to full professorship over colleagues’ objections, raising questions about her qualifications for a post at the nation’s central bank, according to documents obtained by Breitbart News.

The Senate will vote this week to confirm Dr. Lisa Cook for the Federal Reserve. The Senate voted in late March to discharge her from the deadlocked Senate Banking Committee when the committee voted 12-12.

Cook, if confirmed, would be the first black woman Fed governor, and Democrats have claimed that she would bring, as a Ph.D. economist and a professor, a different perspective to the powerful Federal Reserve board.

Senate Republicans have long questioned her qualifications for the post at the Federal Reserve.

According to internal Michigan State University documents obtained by Breitbart News, Cook’s status as a full professor appears to have been elevated even though she had been rejected for the position.

In August 2019, June Pierce Youatt, the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, wrote to Cook, then an associate professor, explaining to her why she denied her application to become a full professor and could not support her research initiative on “gender race, innovation and inequality.”

The message also reveals that 75 percent of her appointment as an associate professor resides with the James Madison College at Michigan State, not focusing primarily on economics.

In response to Cook’s complaints about her denied application for full professorship, Youatt appears to offer to placate her complaints with a retention agreement giving Cook a higher salaried position and more benefits.

A message from Associate Provost Theodore Curry II to Cook in February 2020 revealed that since she signed the retention agreement, she appealed once again for a full professorship in September 2019. In response to Cook’s complaint, Interim Provost Teresa Sullivan and Michigan State President Samuel Stanley decided to promote Cook to become a full professor.

The communications between Cook and Michigan State also reveal that Cook’s academic record focused more on liberal arts than pure economic research, which may undermine claims that she would be well suited for the Federal Reserve post.

Cook’s status as an economics professor at Michigan State University led many to support her nomination, such as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

However, many Republicans have raised issues with her academic record.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) told Breitbart News in an exclusive statement that he wants a more “fulsome investigation” into accusations that Cook embellished her resume after she swore under oath that she had not embellished her record.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson noted that Cook had allegedly “lied” on her resume about writing an influential peer-reviewed paper in the American Economic Review.

Carlson remarked, “But, administrators at Michigan State granted her tenure anyway in the name of equity and equity is what Lisa Cook could bring to the Fed.”

Senate Banking Committee Republicans such as Ranking Member Pat Toomey (R-PA) have also sounded the alarm about her controversial views.

Cook gave a presentation in support of H.R. 40, a bill that would create a commission to study and develop reparations proposals.

She has also appeared to agree with calls to have the Federal Reserve focus on targeting its federal funds rate to improve the black unemployment rate, rather than the national employment rate.

The Federal Reserve nominee has also said that alleged disparities in coronavirus aid are due to “systemic racism.”

Cook also called on the University of Chicago to fire its economics professor Harald Uhlig in June 2020 after Uhlig critized the Black Lives Matter movement for its support of defunding the police. Cook accused Uhlig of “racial harassment.”

She claimed that “free speech has its limits.”