Editorial: Can Jill Biden help bring fellow teacher Marc Fogel home from Russia?
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“Teaching is not what you do. It’s who you are.”
President Joe Biden made that statement in May when addressing the Teachers of the Year dinner.
The president values teachers. He champions education. He has courted the votes of teachers unions. He even married a teacher; first lady Jill Biden has a doctorate in education and spent years teaching in high school and community college.
Marc Fogel is a teacher from Oakmont. He has spent years teaching history to diplomats’ children overseas.
He also has spent years in a Russian prison after his August 2021 arrest for possession of 17 grams of medical marijuana legally prescribed in Pennsylvania for documented spine, hip and knee pain.
In 2022, Fogel was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony.
Related:
WNBA star Brittney Griner was designated wrongfully detained. Fogel was not. Griner was released in December 2022.
Griner’s name — like Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan — has been spoken by President Biden publicly. Fogel’s has not.
Gershkovich and Whelan are accused of espionage, which the U.S. denies. Griner admitted, both in court and in interviews since her release, to possession of the cannabis oil cartridges that prompted her arrest.
The “wrongfully detained” label has not depended on guilt or innocence, admission or denial. Neither has acknowledgment of the detainees by the White House.
On Tuesday, Fogel’s family filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming the State Department’s failure to designate him as wrongfully detained has violated their rights to due process. They cite the differences in treatment of his case compared to others, including Griner.
That could be addressed by passage of the Marc Fogel Act, introduced June 27, 2023. The bill would require the State Department report to Congress on wrongful detention determinations — or lack thereof — within 180 days. The legislation has bipartisan support in a House of Representatives deeply divided by both party and factions, yet it has languished in the Foreign Affairs committee since introduction.
Pennsylvania legislators from both parties and both chambers of Congress have written op-eds today calling for Fogel’s release.
So has Indiana University of Pennsylvania President Michael Driscoll. If nothing else moves the Biden administration to take action, maybe another educator can.
And if one more teacher is what it takes, let’s call on Dr. Jill Biden, who is due to be in the Pittsburgh region today for the second time this month as the presidential campaign ramps up in this crucial swing state.
Fogel is a Pennsylvania teacher. Jill Biden is a teacher. Perhaps she can call upon her husband to say Fogel’s name and make him a priority.
“I just want to say I appreciate all you do,” President Biden told those teachers a month ago. “You are the kite strings that lift our national ambitions aloft.”
If that is more than campaign pandering, he needs to acknowledge the teacher in a Russian prison.