First Black Woman Ascends to Fed Board of Governors
On May 10, 2022, economist Lisa D. Cook won confirmation as the newest member of the United States Federal Reserve’s board of governors.
With that accomplishment, she became the first Black woman to serve on the board of the powerful central banking institution in its 108-year history. After Cook’s nomination cleared the Senate Banking Committee—and not without an intense volley of partisan attacks—she received 51 “yes” and 50 “no” votes in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris delivering yet another tie-breaking vote.
Since taking office, President Joe Biden has worked concertedly to bring much-needed diversity of background and experience to both the Federal Reserve and the Supreme Court. Until very recently, both these institutions had long histories as bastions of white male social and legal power, and have shaped policies in support of inequality and inequity over generations. Cook’s new role, and that of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, just might signal a new era.
An important focus on inequity
Before her elevation to the Federal Reserve Board, Cook had served as a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University’s College of Social Science for 17 years. Having earned her PhD in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, she served on the staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisors during the Obama administration, and as a member of President Joe Biden’s banking policy transition team.
Cook’s academic work focuses extensively on how patterns of race-based violence affect economic outcomes and political trends. In a 2013 paper, for example, she summarized her research into how lynching and other acts of widespread violence against Black Americans between the late 1800s and 1940 affected the number of patents issued to Black inventors.
She was able to trace the loss of more than 1,000 missing patents to the repercussions of segregation legislation, racist riots, and other racially motivated violence. Her conclusions: In the absence of a rule-of-law society, patent productivity drops across the board—and it drops precipitately among Black inventors.
Over time, her research suggests, these societal factors can produce negative effects on a society’s economic development and its technological inventiveness.
A path strewn with racism and sexism
It’s a notable achievement that Cook is now only the second out of five Biden Fed nominees to gain Senate confirmation. Yet the fact that the Vice President had to cast the tie-breaking vote shows just how dysfunctional and polarized the world’s so-called “greatest deliberative body” has become.
In the case of Cook’s nomination to the Federal Reserve Board, which exists supposedly above the sway of partisan politics, there was some particularly gender- and race-based questioning of her qualifications. For example, Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) called her “grossly unqualified” on the Senate floor, questioned the applicability of her experience, and said he was concerned she would be unable to “keep politics out of monetary policy.”
During her confirmation hearings, multiple Republican senators lobbed similar verbal attacks on Cook. Pointing to her deep work into the effects of racist violence on economic growth, they sought to portray her as some sort of radical activist.
Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Hagerty dismissively said to Cook that her body of work appears to be more “social science” than economics.
Cook has also endured patronizing and inappropriate comments from partisan media and the general public, the most extreme calling her appointment “race-based,” and many echoing the same talking points circulated against Ketanji Brown Jackson before her elevation to the Supreme Court.
In response to a general climate of partisan rhetoric, Cook stated publicly that she had been the focus of “anonymous and untrue” attacks on her academic and research achievements.
Fighting for the rest of us
In a Washington Post article reporting on this rancor over her nomination, reporters also spoke with Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and urban policy at The New School. Hamilton pushed back against the oppositional narrative, decidedly characterizing the attacks on Cook as “racist and sexist.” He also stated that elites currently in power seemed to be wielding “anxiety around race” to undergird some of that narrative. Cook, said Hamilton, brings not only a strong background of financial knowledge to her new role, but adds insights that are “innovative and useful.”
The case of Lisa Cook has run in parallel to that of Sarah Bloom Raskin. Earlier in the year, Raskin withdrew her nomination to a top Fed post after vociferous objections and personal attacks from powerful figures, all centering on her emphasis on the economic effects of climate change.
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) chairs the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. He had high praise for Cook and noted the “historic” nature of her confirmation, while calling out his opponents’ insults to her credentials.
In his speech in favor of Cook, Brown said that the Committee had received letters of support for Cook from possibly more sources than had accompanied any previous nomination. These included 35 recommendations from Marshall and Truman Scholars, as well as the National Banking Administration and experts such as former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, a George W. Bush appointee.
Brown further described Cook as someone who will safeguard the Fed’s necessary independence, while being able to fully grasp and prioritize the need for broader economic opportunity for all Americans.