Outgoing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos urges career staffers to 'be the resistance'

(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

published 16 December 2020

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has clashed with the career employees at the department she has led for the last four years, but she had a request for them in a department-wide meeting Tuesday addressing the shift to the incoming Biden administration. "Let me leave you with this plea: Resist," she said, according to a recording of the virtual meeting obtained by Politico. "Be the resistance against forces that will derail you from doing what's right for students. In everything you do, please put students first — always."

DeVos has blamed agency bureaucrats for getting in the way of her policy initiatives, and "political appointees at the Education Department also sought to investigate and punish career employees who they suspected of leaking information to the press," Politico notes. She told Reason magazine in the fall that the Education Department "has caused more problems than it solved." So it's not clear what kind of "resistance" she hopes those employees put up to President-elect Joe Biden's to-be-named education secretary. The Education Department did not respond to Politico's request for comment on the remark.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.