The Aloof “Professor”
By Johnny Roosh
Jodi Cantor writes a fairly balanced piece on Obama’s pre-politics career as an instructor. As you read this, remember the old adage, people don’t change…very much.
Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Apart
He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.
Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured.
In the genus of John Kerry, the Clintons and the Kennedy’s, Barack Obama no doubt seeks the Presidency not as a means to an end; rather the end itself.
But Mr. Obama’s years at the law school are also another chapter…in which he seemed as intently focused on his own political rise as on the institution itself. Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was well liked at the law school, yet he was always slightly apart from it, leaving some colleagues feeling a little cheated that he did not fully engage.
The Chicago faculty is more rightward-leaning than that of other top law schools, but if teaching alongside some of the most formidable conservative minds in the country had any impact on Mr. Obama, no one can quite point to it.
“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”
Michelle, on the other hand may have actually changed quite a bit!
his wife, Michelle, a black woman, loved “The Brady Bunch” so much that she could identify every episode by its opening shots.
Groupies!
As his reputation for frank, exciting discussion spread, enrollment in his classes swelled. Most scores on his teaching evaluations were positive to superlative. Some students started referring to themselves as his groupies.
Liberals flocked to his classes, seeking refuge. After all, the professor was a progressive politician who backed child care subsidies and laws against racial profiling, and in a 1996 interview with the school newspaper sounded skeptical of President Bill Clinton’s efforts to reach across the aisle.
In a calculated fashion, Obama will do or say or refrain from doing or saying anything to attain the post and there is ample evidence of this in his tenure as an instructor and in the observations of those who were colleagues but were never quite able to “know” him or pin him down on his philosophy.
But the liberal students did not necessarily find reassurance. “For people who thought they were getting a doctrinal, rah-rah experience, it wasn’t that kind of class,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a former student who now teaches law at the University of Florida at Gainesville.
For one thing, Mr. Obama’s courses chronicled the failure of liberal policies and court-led efforts at social change: While students appreciated Mr. Obama’s evenhandedness, colleagues sometimes wanted him to take a stand. Nor could his views be gleaned from scholarship; Mr. Obama has never published any. He was too busy, but also, Mr. Epstein believes, he was unwilling to put his name to anything that could haunt him politically, as Ms. Guinier’s writings had hurt her. “He figured out, you lay low,”
Because he never fully engaged, Mr. Obama “doesn’t have the slightest sense of where folks like me are coming from,” Mr. Epstein said. “He was a successful teacher and an absentee tenant on the other issues.”
As for his fundraising abilities, Obama has come a long way.
“Maybe we charged an audacious $20?” said Jesse Ruiz, now a corporate lawyer in Chicago. Mr. Obama was sheepish asking for even that, Mr. Ruiz recalls. With no staff, Mr. Obama would come by the day after a fund-raiser to stuff the proceeds into a backpack.
Now, watching the news, it is dawning on Mr. Obama’s former students that he was mining material for his political future even as he taught them.
Few question Obama’s intelligence; more his motives, sincerity and true political makeup. The glimpses he has allowed coupled with his voting record reveal a candidate leaning farther left than even his supporters let alone most voters realize.
July 30th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
“there is ample evidence of this in his tenure as an instructor and in the observations of those who were colleagues but were never quite able to “know” him or pin him down on his philosophy.”
Congrats, Barack Obama on being the first Democratic professor to get accused of NOT injecting his politics into the classroom enough. Damm you for encouraging students to look at all sides of an issue.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
the NY Times:
RickDFL responds:
Congrats, Barack Obama on being the first Democratic professor to get accused of NOT injecting his politics into the classroom enough.
And we all watch in wonder as RickDFL once again wanders into the deep end of the pool and sinks.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:37 am
According to Republicans:
When Gore ran, he was the MOST LIBERAL candidate in history.
When Kerry ran he was the most liberal person in the Senate.
When it looked like Hillary would be the nominee she was the most liberal person in the Senate.
When Obama became the nominee he suddenly became the most liberal man in the Senate.
First, I think you throw out labels far too easily, second, I don’t think you know what liberal means, it doesn’t mean radical, just as conservative doesn’t mean reactionary (though neo-con does).
Obama is too cozy with business – but he’s hardly FAR LEFT of where his supporters think he is.
That Obama didn’t cozy up to University of Chicago grads who helped to start and push the ajenda of the American Spectator, wow, what a crime.
BTW Mitch – just an aside – http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/30/eveningnews/main4309471.shtml
Unless they shut down Prudhoe Bay or run a NEW pipeline, ANWR won’t add more than 1.5 M bbl/day and wouldn’t be available probably for five years – meaning – it wouldn’t have a meaningful impact, let alone cut gas prices in half. Offshore drilling, no meaningful impact for a decade, and again, wouldn’t cut prices in half – not tomorrow, not in a decade.
Talk about not engaging. Logistics matter.
As for having the Presidency be the goal (or end game) or deciding to use the Presidency to accomplish the end game, yes Mitch, we agree, George Bush used the Presidency to accomplish his goal of looting the treasury, blowing up the debt, and getting rid of political enemies. If that’s good, I’ll take bad.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:46 am
When Gore ran…When Kerry ran…When it looked like Hillary would be the nominee she was the most liberal person in the Senate.
Right. And in your comments, everyone to the right of Rudy Perpich is a “neocon”.
It’s called “branding your opponent”.
BTW Mitch
Check the byline.
Unless they shut down Prudhoe Bay
Why would shutting down Prudhoe Bay have anything to do with getting oil from ANWR?
It’s not like drilling ANWR would drain the North Slope.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:58 am
I think that’s the first time I’ve heard neo-cons described as reactionary. I thought paleocons were the reactionaries.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:09 am
Terry writes:
“Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured.”
How is this an example of injecting politics into the classroom?
July 31st, 2008 at 8:24 am
“He taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured”.
In Chicago? Certainly. Unless the class was called ‘Securing power racial redistricting”.
Mr. Obama was very wise not to leave a paper trail. You need to publish for a career in academia. For a career as politician it can be poison.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:33 am
Terry:
The class was called Constitutional Law. It included a section on re-districting and the Voting Rights Act, both major Con Law topics.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:04 am
Peev, maybe you are to young to remember but, we were told by Jimmy Carter and all the other experts that we would run out of oil within a few years at the current rate of usage in the 70’s. Our usage increased we didn’t run out of oil and Jimmy’s time table has long since expired.
Today we are being told that this oil field or that oil field will only supply us for a year, two years or ten. All of that may be true, if we only get our total supply from that one oil field. We were told what the supply of oil in Prudoe was. We passed that amount long ago. It is still producing.
My point isn’t that oil is endless or what the price should be. It is that the naysayers have been wildly wrong in the past and are almost certainly wrong again.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:17 am
RickDFL-
Redistricting is not typically seen as a way to divvy political power by racial factions. Note the quote: he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured.
This is how he taught the class. There were doubtless other ways it could have been taught.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:20 am
Whenever I hear someone make the argument “We shouldn’t drill because the oil won’t be available for ten years” I think “Would this person have supported drilling a decade ago?”
July 31st, 2008 at 10:09 am
Terry:
“Redistricting is not typically seen as a way to divvy political power by racial factions.” Then how did we get a whole string of court cases on the topic?
If you new anything about Con Law, you would know that race and re-districting is one area where there is no clear liberal conservative divide. The Bush I Admin pushed a very ‘liberal’ interpretation of the Voting Rights Act to require more majority-minority districts. By concentrating blacks, they reduced the overall number of likely Democratic districts.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:42 am
All of which is beside the point, dear boy. read it again: he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. He taught redistricting specifically and exclusively in terms of race. Redistricting is a heavily contested issue even in states that have insignificant populations of non-whites.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Race is a factor in redistricting, but the key is that it’s an incumbent protection racket, especially for the party that gets to draw the lines. But having said that, it’s awfully tough to flip a congressional district under normal circumstances. In my adult life I’ve always lived in districts where (a) the congresscritter was a Democrat and (b) there was almost no chance that a Republican could win. We’re working on it in this cycle (I live in the 4th) and even though we have an outstanding candidate in Ed Matthews, it won’t be easy to elect him. But we’re still trying, just as supporters of Sarvi and E-Tink are trying the 2nd and the 6th.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:35 pm
“He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.”
He sounds like a Professor Zelig, only with a better technique.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Terry:
“He taught redistricting specifically and exclusively in terms of race”
No he did not. His class included a section on the intersection of race and re-districting in constitutional law. The very premise of the questions assumes that that are other issues at stake in re-districting beyond race.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Penigma2- “Offshore drilling, no meaningfull impact for a decade.” As I`ve said elsewhere- ” Mom and dad, you say I have to go to 4 yrs. of high school and then 4 yrs. of college, but that means it will be at least 8 yrs. before I`ll reap any benefit from my education job-wise, so can i just use the Democrats` logic and say screw it, it`s going to take too long? I don`t want to work that hard.”
July 31st, 2008 at 7:11 pm
There goes RatioRick again:
If you new anything about Con Law
So you are lawyer too now, eh, RatioRick? Is there anything you are not an expert on?
Oh, wait, comprehension! You are not an expert on comprehension! Terry had to read the quote back to you 3 times, and yet you still do not get it.