Two Brown alums found themselves making headlines after oil began spilling into the Gulf of Mexico in late April. While one graduate garnered attention for attacking the federal government's response, the other would sink below the surface of recognition in the wake of her early resignation following the spill.
After the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal '91.5 gained national attention for criticizing the federal government's response to the accident, citing its failures to prevent the spill and stating that Louisiana would forge its own path to recovery.
But Liz Birnbaum's '79 involvement began long before the explosion and ended soon after.
At the time of the accident, Birnbaum was director of the Minerals Management Service, a government agency responsible for overseeing BP's inspections and regulations. When MMS became mired in controversy over its allegedly lax regulatory practices, Birnbaum resigned her high-level position as director after being appointed the previous year.
Through this resignation, Birnbaum became the earliest high-level government leader to resign following the incident.
"It's been a great privilege to serve as Director of the MMS," Birnbaum said in a statement of resignation on May 27. "I'm hopeful that the reforms that the Secretary and the Administration are undertaking will resolve the flaws in the current system that I inherited," she added.
Birnbaum declined to comment for this article and has not been granting interviews.
Rise to the top
Birnbaum took a unique path to become MMS's director, and the circumstances surrounding her withdrawal from the top job prove as murky as the Gulf waters today.
Birnbaum proved her ability to distinguish herself and think critically even during her career at Brown, according to Professor of Cognitive Linguistics and Psychological Sciences Pauline Jacobson, who instructed Birnbaum in the completion of her honors thesis.
"I would say that she was still one of maybe a dozen students whose honors work stands out in my mind," Jacobson wrote in an e-mail to The Herald, adding that Birnbaum's thesis showed "she was very talented."
Birnbaum graduated from Brown magna cum laude with a degree in linguistics, which was its own department at the time.
Following her time at Brown, Birnbaum headed to Harvard Law School, where her passion for the infusion of law and environmental policy manifested for the first perceivable time when she served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Environmental Law Review.
She then went on to a career that combined law and resource management, serving as counsel for the National Wildlife Federation water resources division and for the House Committee on Natural Resources.
Under President Bill Clinton, she assumed her first federal appointment as associate solicitor for mineral resources, a role that brought her legal savvy to the forefront as she helped council MMS, in addition to the Bureau of Land Management.
Following these experiences in natural resource management, President Barack Obama appointed her director of MMS in July 2009.
Stemming the flow of corruption?
Birnbaum assumed the role of director at a time when the agency had already been cited for corrupt practices by President Obama, CBS News reported.
Though Birnbaum had not worked before with oil or gas companies, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in a statement announcing her appointment that Birnbaum's wide range of experience with resource management would be a crucial element in reshaping the country's energy plan.
But less than a year into her service, oil began pouring into the gulf. In the aftermath of the largest spill in the nation's history, questions about Birnbaum's capability to enact change floated to the surface.
Officially, Salazar still cited Birnbaum's leadership as a positive influence at MMS, an agency which Salazar, Obama and Birnbaum all argued was already corrupt when they assumed leadership positions, according to several statements released in the spring.
But some advocacy representatives say she did not do enough, given her position as director, to fix the pervasive problems, the New York Times reported the day before her resignation. Top officials said she did not work hard enough to collaborate and build connections to alleviate the issues persisting in the agency, according to the report.
Yet other leaders, such as Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, defended Birnbaum, saying, "the most serious allegations occurred prior to her tenure" of 11 months in an agency recognized for its corruption, according to a CBS News report.
The question of individual versus agency-wide culpability in the spill remains unanswered at this point.
The ‘cleanup' stage
Just as the true source of blame remains in question, ambiguity surrounds the resignation of Birnbaum. Conflicting media reports — about whether she resigned willingly or was pressured out — emerged simultaneously carrying different statements about her departure.
Reports included claims that she was fired, a general belief that she resigned under pressure and the official statement released by Salazar that she resigned of "her own volition." The recent reorganization of MMS into three agencies by Salazar, which would have lessened Birnbaum's role as director, according to the Times, may also have played a role.
