Academic

"He?s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings?

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

That's Richard Epstein describing Barak Obama in an article about Obama's time as a law professor at Chicago. Obama arrived at the Law School two years after I graduated, so I didn't encounter him there, but I have heard good things about him from other students. Epstein wants to portray Obama as calculating:

While students appreciated Mr. Obama?s evenhandedness, colleagues sometimes wanted him to take a stand.... [H]is views [could not] 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," Mr. Epstein said.

And this:

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.?

Given that Obama started teaching at Chicago only five years after Bork was confronted with his scholarship in the Senate confirmation hearings, who could blame him from being shy about taking a stand. After all, he wasn't a tenure track professor and didn't plan to make a career out of academe. It seems like plain good sense to me.

Even though he wasn't aiming for an academic job, he got a tenured offer from Chicago:

Soon after [Obama lost the 2000 Congressional primary race to incumbent Representative Bobby L. Rush], the faculty saw an opening and made him its best offer yet: Tenure upon hiring. A handsome salary, more than the $60,000 he was making in the State Senate or the $60,000 he earned teaching part time. A job for Michelle Obama directing the legal clinic.

Your political career is dead, Daniel Fischel, then the dean, said he told Mr. Obama, gently. Mr. Obama turned the offer down. Two years later, he decided to run for the Senate. He canceled his course load and has not taught since.

Your political career is dead. Nice call.

By the way, former Glom guest blogger Danny Sokol is also quoted in the piece, observing that Obama was not one to dole out a "rah-rah experience" to liberal law students.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on July 30, 2008 (boomark / email).