As the country celebrates the inauguration of its first black president, the first black president of GW’s Student Association, who held office in the early ’90s, is making accomplishments of his own.

Kyle Farmbry, now a professor at Rutgers University, will soon publish a book titled “Administration and the Other: Exploration of Diversity and Marginalization in the Political Administrative,” which will explore discrimination against minorities in the political sphere, he said in an interview.

Though Farmbry said he did not feel discriminated against during his tenure as SA president, he said he was forced to balance his commitment to the University as a whole with his desire to represent the black community. This challenge, he said, is similar to those that President Barack Obama will face.

“There’s always the question of whether or not you’re going to keep the special constituencies you represent in a special place in your heart,” Farmbry said. “You also have to keep in mind that you’re there representing the whole. Obama’s done a great job of saying, ‘I’m the president of the United States’ and showing that that’s his first role.”

Although Farmbry said he is “not in any position to give Obama advice,” he does look back on his SA days as a “microcosm of the political world.”

“I loved the fact that GW really did attract a number of students who I knew were going to do some exciting things,” Farmbry said. “I think there are people who just knew they were going to do some things and are doing things.”

Farmbry said his interest in his new book’s subject dates back to his days as a graduate student at GW. But he said his final motivation to put his thoughts to paper came in the wake of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, after seeing two sets of photos printed in a publication – one labeling a white couple “survivors” and the other depicting a group of black individuals with a caption that read “looters.”

“One of the questions I began to wrestle with was how exactly this kind of image and depiction might shape public policy in the aftermath of Katrina,” Farmbry said.

In addition to media depiction of the Katrina disaster, Farmbry’s book examines periods in American history and current political issues influenced by society’s views of the marginalized groups that are so often labeled “the other,” he said.