According to The Student Life, part of the reason Janet Napolitano is being brought is L'affaire George.
Here's what Oxtoby had to say:
“She’s going to be an interesting and timely person to be speaking at graduation because of the issues around immigration and, from a Pomona perspective, the Nick George story about homeland security,” Pomona College President David Oxtoby said.
Of course we already know that Pomona offers tuition breaks to illegal immigrants, but not legal immigrants, so we likely know how this is going to shake out.
As for George, well, have a look at a piece I wrote for Big Government titled, "Dear T.S.A: Please Profile Liberal Arts Students." Here's a short selection. I begin by quoting Daniel Rubin.
A federal agent sizing up Nick George might peg him as Most Likely to be Recruited by the CIA. He’s a physics major at a top college, is minoring in Middle Eastern studies, speaks Arabic, has lived in Jordan, and is adventurous enough to have backpacked through Sudan and Egypt.
Or rather, here’s what the federal agent could have thought instead.
- Physics major? Possibly knows how to make a bomb.
- Went to Sudan? One of the world’s most vibrant terrorist training camps is located there. (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once called Sudan the second home of the “dear, pious and revolutionary brothers.”)
- Middle Eastern studies? Right, because Columbia’s Middle Eastern studies department isn’t a hotbed of radicalism. Oh wait? It is?
