Lois Lerner, the head of IRS’s tax-exempt organizations division, and one of the IRS officials at the center of the agency’s targeting scandal, has backed out of her appearance as the keynote speaker at the Western New England University School of Law’s commencement ceremony, according to The Boston Globe.
“As this event was unfolding, I think she was concerned for the amount of publicity and energy around it,” Barbara Moffat, a spokeswoman for the university, told the Globe. “She did not want — she was very concerned and sensitive — she did not want the attention drawn away from the graduates.”
Lerner graduated from the law school in 1978.
