Memories of Barack Obama -- After Harvard Law School
No
one heard of Obama before 2004! Where are the cases he worked on as a
lawyer? Where are the students he taught? What about the courses he
taught? The professors he worked with? Who was the Best Man at his
wedding? Everything has been sealed! It's
as if he burst on the scene with no past. The only people that knew him
were a couple of people with stories of how evil he was.
Like everything else Birther, this meme is easily debunked. Here are pictures, videos, interviews, links, and other resources.
NOTE:
Barack Obama' career developed via multiple simultaneous volunteer and
professional positions. As such, this section is not as linear as the
other sections have been.
Chicago: Building a Career
Practicing AttorneyDavis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland (1992-2004)University of Chicago Law School (1992-2004)Philanthropy and Community Projects UNDER CONSTRUCTIONCook County Project Vote (1992)Public Allies Chicago (1992, Founding Member of the Board of Directors)The Woods Fund of Chicago (Board Member, 1994-2004)Joyce Foundation (1994-2002)Chicago Annenberg Challenge (Board of Directors 1995-2002, Chairman and Founding President, 1995-1999)Lugenia Burns Hope Center (Board of Directors)Center for Neighborhood Technology (Board of Directors)Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Board of Directors)Cook County Bar Association Community Law ProjectPublished Author (1995 and 2006) UNDER CONSTRUCTIONPolitician UNDER CONSTRUCTIONIllinois State Senate UNDER CONSTRUCTIONIllinois US Representative Campaign UNDER CONSTRUCTION2004 Democratic National Convention UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Practicing Attorney
Admitted to practice in Illinois, December 17, 1991
(Voluntarily retired 2002)
Admitted to:- Illinois Supreme Court
- United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois
- United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Miner Barnhill & Galland
Attorney Judson Miner
called Harvard to offer a job to a graduating student named Barack
Obama and didn't expect to be showered with gratitude. Still, he wasn't
expecting the reception he got. "You
can leave your name and take a number," the woman who answered the
phone at the Harvard Law Review said breezily. "You're No. 647."
As the first black president of
the Harvard Law Review, Obama had his pick of top law firms. He chose
Miner’s Chicago civil rights firm, where he represented community
organizers, discrimination victims and black voters trying to force a
redrawing of city ward boundaries. Obama had offers from
more prestigious, higher-paying firms. But he chose to work for Miner
-- former Mayor Harold Washington's counsel -- because of his firm's
focus on civil rights litigation and community redevelopment.
"Barack
was a young kid when he came here," Miner said. "Senior lawyers are not
going to be very deferential to Barack. He was not 'THE Barack Obama' yet." Obama was 32 in 1993, having entered law school at 27. "He wrote lots of substantial memos, but he didn't try any cases," said Judson Miner, a partner in the firm who was Obama's boss.
During Obama's
three years working as a full-time associate at Miner's firm, Miner
noticed some of the qualities that have become known as his strengths
and weaknesses on the campaign trail: "As
smart as he is, he is very quick to appreciate all kinds of nuances
with legal issues," Miner said. "He finds it very hard to shoot back a
real quick, simple answer. His instinct was to better understand what
the nuances were."
His practice was confined
mainly to federal court in Chicago, where he made formal appearances in
only five district court cases and another five in cases before the 7th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- a total of 10 cases in his legal
career. He was on the winning side of just about all those cases. Miner
said there were 30 cases to which Obama contributed in some way.
Obama
admits he played a mostly behind-the-scenes role at his law firm. He
researched the law, drafted motions, prepared for depositions and did
other less glamorous work during his three years full-time and eight
years "of counsel" to the firm. Many trial lawyers spend their time
similarly, part of a trend over the last 20 years of settling a greater
percentage of cases before trial.
A review of the cases Obama
worked on during his brief legal career shows he played the "strong,
silent type" in court, introducing himself and his client, then stepping
aside to let other lawyers do the talking.
Only
once did Obama appear before the prestigious 7th Circuit U.S. Court of
Appeals, where Judge Richard Posner is legendary for tearing into
inexperienced lawyers. But Posner knew Obama as a fellow senior lecturer
at the University of Chicago Law School and kept his grilling polite.
Obama never lost his cool, and he won the case. [audio of the oral arguments]
After
three years doing "first-rate" work as an associate, Obama was elected
to the state Senate, and Miner offered to keep him on salary and let him
open a Springfield branch of the firm.... Obama became "of counsel,"
working out of the office during the Legislature's summer breaks until
he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Colleagues
Robert Kriss,
Fay Clayton and every other co-counsel and opposing counsel interviewed
for this story praised Obama's legal ability, temperament and
everything about his courtroom demeanor, even though, they agree, he
didn't say much in the courtroom. Many are now donors to his campaign.
“It’s a real do-good firm,” says Fay Clayton,
lead counsel for the National Organization for Women in a landmark
lawsuit aimed at stopping abortion clinic violence. “Barack and that
firm were a perfect fit. He wasn’t going to make as much money there as
he would at a LaSalle Street firm or in New York, but money was never
Barack’s first priority anyway.”
Cases
ACORN v. Edgar (1995) - United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.
ACORN v. Edgar (1995) - United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
ACORN v. Illinois State Bd. of Elections (1996) - United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Motor Voter Case: In
1995, former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal
"Motor Voter" law, which Republicans argued could invite fraud and
which some Republicans feared could swell the ranks of Democratic
voters. The law mandated people be allowed to register to vote in government offices such as driver's license renewal centers. Obama
sued on behalf of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now. The League of Women Voters and other public-interest groups
joined in.
"He
and his client were the ones who filed the original case -- they blazed
the trail," said Paul Mollica, who represented the League. Transcripts
show that at court hearings, Obama identified himself, then let Mollica
begin speaking. Maria Valdez of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and
Education Fund sometimes spoke. The U.S. Justice Department joined in. Letting
the heavy-hitters at the Justice Department make the arguments appears
to have been a sound strategy -- Obama's side won, even without him
talking.
"Obama
was involved to some extent in the legal work, but he was not the
leader in actually litigating the thing -- Paul [Mollica] probably was
the leader of the coalition and did most of the legal work," said David
Melton, who represented Cook County Clerk David Orr. "Obama did have
some expertise in certain constitutional aspects of the case."
After
Obama's side won in court, Edgar appealed. Obama's side won again --
without Obama talking. The lawyers then gathered in a small room in the
courthouse to decide how to push the state to fix the problems. "We
had a raucous meeting shortly after the remand, and Barack was a very
adamant spokesman for taking a very aggressive stance to try to repair
the damage," Mollica said. "He's the one who put a charge in us that it
was time to move and hold the state accountable."
Entry at Civil Rights Litigation Clearing House.
Entries at Google Scholar:
Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 322 (N.D. Ill. 1995)
Redlining Case: Obama represented Calvin Roberson
in a 1994 lawsuit against Citibank, charging the bank systematically
denied mortgages to African-American applicants and others from minority
neighborhoods.
"I
don't recall him ever standing up and giving an impassioned speech --
it was a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff," said Fay Clayton, the lead
lawyer on the case.
"He
was the very junior lawyer in that case," said attorney Robert Kriss.
"He had just graduated from law school. I don't recall him being in
court at any time I was there. I was the lead lawyer for Citibank and he
was not very visible to me."
Entry at Civil Rights Legislation Clearing House.
Baravati v. Josephthal, Lyon & Ross, Inc. (1994) - United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Whistleblower Case: In 1994, Obama went before the 7th Circuit to defend Ahmad Baravati, a trader blackballed by his bosses after he reported them for fraud. An arbitrator awarded Baravati $60,000 in damages plus $120,000 in punitive damages against the former bosses. They appealed, saying arbitrators don't have the power to award punitive damages.
Obama
had a tough job because the same court had ruled a week earlier that an
arbitrator could not award punitive damages. But Obama convinced them
this case was different.
"You're
suggesting that there's a federal common law that likes punitive
damages, but this could be preempted by a state law that says 'no
punitive damages,'" Posner told Obama.
"I don't think I'm saying there's a federal law that 'likes punitive damages,'"
Obama responded, not dropping his tone of respect. "I think what I'm
saying is that there's a federal law that likes the notion that the same
remedies that will be available in court will be available in
arbitration."
Obama won, and Baravati got to keep the extra $120,000. He still is grateful. "I found he's a very smart, innovative, skilled, relentless advocate for his client," Baravati said.
Entry at Google Scholar: Baravati v. Josephthal, Lyon & Ross, Inc., 28 F. 3d 704 (1994) - United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
United States ex rel. Chandler v. County of Cook (2002)
Obama also wrote a
major portion of an appeals brief on behalf of a whistleblower who
exposed waste and corruption in a research project involving Cook County
Hospital and the Hektoen Institute for Medical Research and alleged
that she was fired in retaliation. The case was settled out of court.
The county agreed to pay the federal government $5 million, part of
which went to the whistleblower, Dr. Janet Chandler. Hektoen agreed to
pay $500,000 to the government plus $170,000 to Chandler for wrongful
termination.
Psychologist Janet Chandler brought
a successful False Claims Act lawsuit against Cook County Hospital for
forging data and failing to comply with federal human research
regulations in a federally funded drug abuse study. As a young attorney,
President Obama worked on Dr. Chandler's case. The Supreme Court upheld
Dr. Chandler's lawsuit.
Barnett v. Daley, 32 F. 3d 1196 (1994) - United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
And Obama was part of a team
of lawyers representing black voters and aldermen that forced Chicago
to redraw ward boundaries that the City Council drew up after the 1990
census. They said the boundaries were discriminatory. After an
appeals court ruled the map violated the federal Voting Rights Act,
attorneys for both sides drew up a new set of ward boundaries.
University of Chicago Law School
Video
University of Chicago Law School — Ideas & Action. UCLS Promotional video showing professors, students. 2002
Courses Taught:
Current Issues in Racism and the Law Spring Term 1994. Syllabus
Constitutional Law III:
Final Exams 1996, (Answer Memo 1996), 1997, (Answer Memo 1997), 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. Analysis by other law professors.
OFFICIAL SOURCES:University of Chicago Law School Website
November 4, 2008
The University of Chicago Law School congratulates former Senior Lecturer Barack Obama on his election to the office of President of the United States....
Barack
Obama taught at the Law School from 1992 until his election to the U.S.
Senate in 2004. During those years, he brought a dynamic teaching
presence to his courses, which included “Constitutional Law III: Equal
Protection,” “Voting Rights and the Democratic Process,” and a seminar
entitled “Current Issues in Racism and the Law.”
The entire Law School community applauds President-Elect Obama on his victory and wishes him well during his term of office.
The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer."
From
1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served
as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996.
He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught
three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of
the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not
full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from
the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each
of the Law School's Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in
politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several
times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was
invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he
declined.
Chicago Sun-Times: December 18, 2007
A
Sun-Times review of student evaluations from Obama's 10 years of
teaching part-time at the University of Chicago Law School shows that
students almost always rated Obama as one of their top instructors --
except for one quarter in 1997.
While
a state senator, Obama held classes early on Monday and late on Friday
during legislative sessions, running right through the school's popular Friday evening wine-and-cheese hour. Obama was so popular, students signed up for his class anyway.
"We'd
be in class and get messages that he would come in 45 minutes late and
everyone would wait for him," said former student Andrew Janis, now a
New York lawyer.
"I
loved teaching," Obama told the Sun-Times. "But when the opportunity
came [to run for U.S. Senate] I took it. I think some of the public
speaking skills I developed in the classroom -- stay on your toes; don't
make my answers too long -- I'm using on the campaign trail."
The
student evaluations of Obama that remain at the school library (some
are missing) are overwhelmingly positive. A reporter was unable to find
the four students who said they would not recommend Obama's class to
another student.
Publications
The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process (University Casebooks), Foundation Press. Samuel Issacharoff (Author), Pamela S. Karlan (Author), Richard H. Pildes (Author), 1998.
Preface to the First Edition, page x:
For reading or teaching sections of the manuscript and commenting, we would like to thank ... Barack Obama...
STUDENTS
Craig Cunningham, UCLS ’93
Craig
Cunningham, ’93, one of the President’s first students and a supporter
of his teacher’s political ambitions, felt that Obama was brilliant,
talented, and had the potential to be a great leader. But Cunningham was
also concerned about Obama’s political future.
“I
did expect him to run for office, because I would hang around after
class and we would talk about the state senate,” Cunningham explains. “But
after he lost the congressional race to Bobby Rush I thought he was
moving too fast, that he should slow down and not run for a different
office for a while because he was trying to do too much at one time. And
Chicago politics were not going to allow him to do that. I was worried.
And I was really surprised when he told me he was going to run for U.S.
Senate.”
“We
African American students were very aware of him because at the time
there really weren’t a lot of minority professors at the Law School,”
Cunningham explains, “and we really wanted him to be a strong
representation for the African American students. We wanted him to live
up to the pressures and reach out to other ethnic minorities. And we
were also very excited about possibly having an African American
tenure-track professor at the Law School.”
“In
Con Law III we study equal process and due process. He was incredibly
charismatic, funny, really willing to listen to student viewpoints—which
I thought was very special at Chicago,” says Elysia Solomon, ’99.
“There were so many diverse views in the class and people didn’t feel
insecure about voicing their opinions. I thought that he did a really
good job of balancing viewpoints.”
“I
knew he was ambitious, but at that point in time at the Law School
there were so many people on the faculty that you knew weren’t going to
be professors for the rest of their lives,” Solomon explains. “We had
[Judge] Abner Mikva and Elena Kagan and Judge Wood and Judge Posner.
There is a very active intellectual life at the Law School and this
melding of the spheres of academics and the real world is very cool.
It’s what attracts teachers and students to the school.”
Jesse Ruiz, UCLS ’95
“When
I walked into class the first day I remember that we—meaning the
students I knew—thought we were going to get a very left-leaning
perspective on the law,” explains Jesse Ruiz, ’95.
“We
assumed that because he was a minority professor in a class he
designed. But he was very middle-of-the-road. In his class we were very
cognizant that we were dealing with a difficult topic, but what we
really got out of that class was that he taught us to think like lawyers
about those hard topics even when we had
issues about those topics.”
issues about those topics.”
Unsurprisingly,
though, he was of greater interest to the minority students on campus.
“I don’t think most people know his history,” Ruiz says, “but when he
became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review it
was a national story. I remembering reading the story and thinking I
gotta go to law school!”
In
1996, Obama ran for, and won, the Thirteenth District of Illinois state
senate seat, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from
Hyde Park–Kenwood to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Then in 2000
he ran for, and lost, the Democratic nomination for Bobby Rush’s seat in
the U.S. House of Representatives.
“He was very demoralized at that point and would not have recommended a career in public service to anyone,” Ruiz says.
“He
had suffered a setback, he was facing a lot of struggles in
Springfield, and it was a hard lifestyle traveling back and forth to
Springfield. We sat at lunch and he talked about how if he had joined a
big firm when he graduated he could have been a partner. We did a lot of
what if. But then he decided to run for U.S. Senate. And the rest is
history.”
Over
time, Obama developed a reputation for teaching from a nonbiased point
of view. He was also noted for widening the legal views of his students.
“I liked that he included both jurisprudence and real politics in the class discussions,” says Dan Johnson-Weinberger, ’00.
“Lots
of classes in law school tend to be judge-centric and he had as much a
focus on the legislative branch as the judicial branch. That was
refreshing.”
“I
was into state politics while I was at the Law School, so I am one of
the few alums who knew the President as both a legislator and as a
teacher,” notes Johnson-Weinberger. “I thought he would continue as a successful politician. But I never would have guessed that he would be our President.”
“Most
students were not that focused on Barack during the years I was there,”
says Joe Khan, ’00. “For example, every year the professors would
donate their time or belongings to the law school charity auction.
Professor Obama’s donation was to let two students spend the day with
him in Springfield, where he’d show them around the state senate and
introduce them to the other senators. People now raise thousands of
dollars to be in a room with the man, but my friend and I won the bid
for a few hundred bucks.”
David Franklin, UCLS
In
his voting rights course, Obama taught Lani Guinier's proposals for
structuring elections differently to increase minority representation.
Opponents attacked those suggestions when Guinier was nominated as
assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1993, costing her the
post.
"I
think he thought they were good and worth trying," said David Franklin,
who now teaches law at DePaul University in Chicago. But whether out of
professorial reserve or budding political caution, Obama would not say
so directly. "He surfaced all the competing points of view on Guinier's
proposals with total neutrality and equanimity," Franklin said. "He just
let the class debate the merits of them back and forth."
Kenworthey Bilz, UCLS
"Anybody
who's thinking they want to go into academia, conservative or liberal,
kind of knows they have to take equal protection," says Kenworthey Bilz,
who took equal protection from Obama in 1997 and is now a professor at
Northwestern Law School. "I can very confidently say he didn't strike me
as liberal or conservative."
"He was not an ivory tower academic," said former student Kenworthey Bilz,
who had him for the low-ranked 1997 Constitutional Law class. "The
class was not his first love. He was basically in the trenches. These
were real problems to him. That kind of on-the-street realism was really
refreshing."
Patrick Jasperse, UCLS
“He was very engaging, approachable and human,” recalls Patrick Jasperse, now a Justice Department trial attorney based in Washington.
Andrew Janis, UCLS
While
a state senator, Obama held classes early on Monday and late on Friday
during legislative sessions, running right through the school's popular
Friday evening wine-and-cheese hour. Obama was so popular, students
signed up for his class anyway.
"We'd
be in class and get messages that he would come in 45 minutes late and
everyone would wait for him," said former student Andrew Janis, now a
New York lawyer.
"Some
professors are just kind of going through the motions with you," Janis
said. "He actually seemed to take everyone's point of view seriously."
Adam Bonin, UCLS
It
was 1996, and there I was, in a seminar room with maybe fifteen
students, not knowing that I was learning from the man who might be the
next President of the United States.
Spring
quarter of my second year, I took Voting Rights and Election Law as a
seminar with Professor Obama. Now, let’s be clear: in a school with a
lot of Somebodies – Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, Cass Sunstein and
David Currie – he was a relative nobody, and even compared with other
younger faculty, it was Larry Lessig and Elena Kagan who
had more of the hype. But Obama was teaching a course in a subject I
wanted to study – at a point when I realized that law school was too
short to be spent in classes that felt obligatory – and that made it an
easy decision.
And
he was ... different. For one thing, better dressed. Sleek sweaters
and blazers as opposed to ill-fitting, coffee-stained suits with
mismatched ties. But he was also less formal, more relaxed – he never
taught the class as though he knew the answers to all the questions he
was posing and was just hiding the ball from us until we could find
them. Confident, sure, but never cocky.
What’s
more, he taught Voting Rights in a different way than others do. He
didn’t use a textbook, for starters, but rather had us each purchase an
eight-inch high multilith of cases, law review articles and statutes
that he had personally compiled. And they weren’t all the "big" cases
either – no, our class started by reviewing some early-19th century
cases about the denial of the franchise, so that as the course moved
forward we saw "voting rights" not as some static thing to be analyzed,
but a constantly- and still-evolving process to be affected. Over the
course of a few months, we studied changes in the franchise, changes in
the rights of political parties, campaign finance law and redistricting,
among other topics. We learned the law, but we also learned it on the
level of real-world impact: based on a whites-only party primary, how
many people would be denied a voice? What kind of policies would result
from such a legislature?
Much
in the Chicago tradition, he wanted all voices to be heard in the
classroom, and when there a viewpoint that wasn’t being expressed or
students were too complacent in their liberal views, he’d push the
contrary view himself. These classes were conversations.
And
the conversations extended outside the classroom. I spent plenty of
time in Prof. Obama’s office, talking to him about the paper I was
working on. Just the two of us, one on one, with him always provoking
me to think deeper, work harder ...
A favorite theme, said Salil Mehra, now a law professor at Temple University, were the values and cultural touchstones that Americans share. Mr. Obama’s case in point: his wife, Michelle, a black woman, loved “The Brady Bunch” so much that she could identify every episode by its opening shots.
“Are
there legal remedies that alleviate not just existing racism, but
racism from the past?” Adam Gross, now a public interest lawyer in
Chicago, wrote in his class notes in April 1994.
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.
He
wanted his charges to try arguing that life was better under
segregation, that black people were better athletes than white ones. “I
remember thinking, ‘You’re offending my liberal instincts,’ ” Mary
Ellen Callahan, now a privacy lawyer in Washington, recalled.
In
class, Mr. Obama sounded many of the same themes he does on the
campaign trail, Ms. Callahan said, ticking them off: “self-determinism
as opposed to paternalism, strength in numbers, his concept of community
development.”
In his voting rights course, Mr. Obama taught Lani Guinier’s proposals for structuring elections differently to increase minority representation.
“I think he thought they were good and worth trying,” said David Franklin, who now teaches law at DePaul University in Chicago.
But
whether out of professorial reserve or budding political caution, Mr.
Obama would not say so directly. “He surfaced all the competing points
of view on Guinier’s proposals with total neutrality and equanimity,”
Mr. Franklin said. “He just let the class debate the merits of them back
and forth.”
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. Byron
Rodriguez, a real estate lawyer in San Francisco, recalls his
professor’s admiration for the soaring but plainspoken speeches of
Frederick Douglass.
“No
one speaks this way anymore,” Mr. Obama told his class, wondering aloud
what had happened to the art of political oratory. In particular, Mr.
Obama admired Douglass’s use of a collective voice that embraced black
and white concerns, one that Mr. Obama has now adopted himself.
“When
you hear him talking about issues, it’s at a level so much simpler than
the one he’s capable of,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He was a lot more fun to
listen to back then.”
COLLEAGUES
David Strauss, Colleague
“Many
of us thought he would be a terrific addition to the faculty, but we
understood that he had other plans,” explains David Strauss, Gerald
Ratner Distinguished Service Professor. “Although I don’t think any of
us imagined that things would work out the way they did.”
During
his tenure in the state senate, Obama continued to teach at the Law
School, some nights traveling straight up from evening sessions at the
State House to his classroom.
“But the students never thought of him as a part-timer,” Strauss adds. “They just thought of him as a really good teacher.”
Professor David Strauss,
the only teacher with higher ratings than Obama in his last year at the
school, said, "The students thought he was great. He thought about
things in unconventional ways."
Douglas Baird, Colleague
Douglas Baird,
the Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of Law and former
Dean, shared Cunningham’s concern that winning the seat was a long shot
for Obama. “I
remember having a cup of coffee with him when he said he was thinking of
running for the U.S. Senate, and I looked at him straight in the eye
and said, ‘Don’t do it, you’re not going to win.’”
[Baird] remembers
once asking Obama to assess potential candidates for governor. "First
of all, I'm not running for governor," Obama told him. "But if I did, I
would expect you to support me."
Standing
in his favorite classroom in the austere main building, sharp-witted
students looming above him, Obama refined his public speaking style, his
debating abilities, his beliefs. "He tested his ideas in classrooms,"
said Dennis Hutchinson, a colleague. Every seminar hour brought a new
round of "Is affirmative action justified? Under what circumstances?" as
Hutchinson put it.
Richard Epstein, Colleague
"I don't think anything that went on in these chambers affected him," said Richard Epstein,
a libertarian colleague who says he longed for 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."
Nor
could his views be gleaned from scholarship; Obama has never published
any. He was too busy, but also, Epstein believes, he was unwilling to
put his name to anything that could haunt him politically, as Guinier's
writings had hurt her. "He figured out, you lay low," Epstein said.
Epstein, who once almost
sold his Hyde Park home to Obama and would buttonhole him to talk about
things like state mandates for health insurance, offers one reason why:
"He was always a terrific listener. He'd sit there and cock his head,
take it all in."
Of
course, as Epstein points out, Obama's willingness to listen didn't
necessarily mean he was willing to be convinced. "What you don't get,
alas and alack, out of all this is a change in point of view," Epstein
says. "If you ask me whether I had any influence on his intellectual or
moral development, I'd say no, not even a little."
Abner Mikva, Colleague
Obama
had other business on his mind, embarking on five political races
during his 12 years at the school. Teaching gave him satisfaction, along
with a perch and a paycheck, but he was impatient with academic debates
over "whether to drop a footnote or not drop a footnote," said Abner
Mikva, a mentor whose own career has spanned Congress, the federal court
system and the same law school.
"Those
are tremendous ratings, especially for someone who had a day job,"
Professor Cass Sunstein said. "We wanted him to join the faculty
full-time at various different junctures. That's not a trivial fact. . .
. If we want to hire someone, the faculty has to think they're
tremendous. But he liked political life."
Daniel Fischel, Former Dean, UCLS
In
the spring of 2000, not long after Barack Obama was trounced in the
Democratic primary for a South Side Chicago congressional seat, Daniel
Fischel staged an intervention. Meeting with Obama in the main lounge at
the University of Chicago Law School, where Fischel was then dean and
Obama was a part-time senior lecturer, Fischel offered Obama some
unsolicited advice. "I told him that it was obvious his political career
was going nowhere," Fischel recalls, "and that he really ought to think
about doing something else."
The
particular "something else" Fischel had in mind was a full-time tenured
professorship; to sweeten the offer, Fischel said the law school would
even hire Obama's wife, Michelle, to run its legal clinic. Although the
move would require Obama to give up his state Senate seat, Fischel tried
to convince his junior colleague that Chicago professor might be a more
natural role than Chicago politician for a cerebral guy like him. "I
mentioned people who'd been faculty members like [Antonin] Scalia and
[Richard] Posner and [Frank] Easterbrook and many others who had gone on
to very distinguished careers outside of academia or in combination
with academia," Fischel says. "I told him he could be a faculty member
as well as a public intellectual."
Obama declined Fischel's overture, saying that he wanted to give elected politics another shot.
"What
I know from my dealings with him at the law school is that he does
really attempt to understand the points of view of other people who look
at the world or a particular issue differently than he does," says
Fischel. "He's much more intellectual, much more thoughtful, much more
interested in discussion, debate, and dialogue than the typical
politician. And that gives me some confidence about him, even though
from my perspective he's much too liberal. I've never voted for a
Democrat in my entire life. He's the first one I might vote for."
Saul Levmore, Current Dean, UCLS
Saul
Levmore, the school's current dean, whose politics are hard to
characterize but generally right-leaning, says, "We were intensely
interested in him. We were looking for him to say, 'I'm giving up
politics, I want to be an academic.' We were always in recruiting mode
with him."
PHILANTHROPY AND COMMUNITY PROJECTS
Cook County Project Vote
The
most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the
result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a
not-for-profit national organization. "It was the most efficient
campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.
At
the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American
lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama....
"Project
Vote! is nonpartisan, strictly nonpartisan. But we do focus our efforts
on minority voters, and on states where we can explain to them why
their vote will matter. [Carol Moseley] Braun made that easier in
Illinois." So [SandyNewman, founder of Project Vote] decided to open a Cook County Project Vote! office and went looking for someone to head it.
The
name Barack Obama surfaced. "I was asking around among community
activists in Chicago and around the country, and they kept mentioning
him," Newman says. Obama by then was working with church and community
leaders on the West Side, and he was writing a book that the publisher
Simon & Schuster had contracted for while he was editor of the law
review. He was 30 years old.
When
Newman called, Obama agreed to put his other work aside. "I'm still not
quite sure why," Newman says. ''This was not glamorous, high-paying
work. But I am certainly grateful. He did one hell of a job."
...
Within a few months, Obama, a tall, affable workaholic, had recruited
staff and volunteers from black churches, community groups, and
politicians. He helped train 700 deputy registrars, out of a total of
11,000 citywide. And he began a saturation media campaign with the help
of black-owned Brainstorm Communications. (The company's president,
Terri Gardner, is the sister of Gary Gardner, president of Soft Sheen
Products, Inc., which donated thousands of dollars to Project Voters
efforts.) The group's slogan-"It's a Power Thing"-was ubiquitous in
African-American neighborhoods. Posters were put up. Black-oriented
radio stations aired the group's ads and announced where people could go
to register. Minority owners of McDonald's restaurants allowed
registrars on site and donated paid radio time to Project Vote! Labor
unions provided funding, as, in late fall, did the Clinton/Gore
campaign, whose national voter-registration drive was being directed by
Chicago alderman Bobby Rush.
"It
was overwhelming," says Joseph Gardner, a commissioner of the
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and the director of the steering
committee for Project Vote! "The black community in this city had not
been so energized and so single-minded since Harold [Washington]died."
...The
success of the voter-registration drive has marked [Obama] as the
political star the Mayor should perhaps be watching for. "The sky's the
limit for Barack," says Burrell.
Some
of Daley's closest advisers are similarly impressed. "In its technical
demands, a voter-registration drive is not unlike a mini-political
campaign," says John Schmidt, chairman of the
Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and a fundraiser for Project
Vote! "Barack ran this superbly. I have no doubt he could run an equally
good political campaign if that's what he decided to do next."
The Woods Fund, Board of Directors
Jean Rudd,
executive director of the Woods Fund, is another person on guard
against self-appointed, self-promoting community leaders. She admires
not only Obama's intelligence but his honesty. "He is one of the most
articulate people I have ever met, but he doesn't use his gift with
language to promote himself. He uses it to clarify the difficult job
before him and before all of us. He's not a promoter; from the very
beginning, he always makes it clear what his difficulties are. His
honesty is refreshing."
Woods
was the first foundation to underwrite Obama's work with [Developing
Communities Project]. Now that he's on the Woods board, Rudd says, "He
is among the most hard-nosed board members in wanting to see results. He
wants to see our grants make change happen—not just pay salaries."
Illinois State Senate
April 2003 Videotape interrogations. Senate Bill 15 (Obama, D-Chicago) is a bill that requires videotaping of interrogations in homicide investigations. Although it is a work-in-progress, there appears to be a consensus that something close to Senate Amendment No. 1 will be passed by the General Assembly. Senator Obama deserves much credit for closing this deal.
Published Author
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
by Barack Obama
Published July 18th 1995
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling
memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother
searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It
begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father–a figure
he knows more as a myth than as a man–has been killed in a car accident.
This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey–first to a small town
in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family
to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his
family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last
reconciles his divided inheritance.
Awards:
Grammy Award for best spoken word album, 2005, for Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
British Book Awards, Biography of the Year 2009Grammy Award for best spoken word album (includes poetry, audio books, and storytelling), 2007, for The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
British Book Awards, nominated 2009
Contemporaneous Sources
Chicago Reader: December 07, 1995
Lawyer, teacher, philanthropist,
and author Barack Obama doesn't need another career. But he's entering
politics to getback to his true passion—community organization
When Barack Obama returned to Chicago in 1991
after three brilliant years at Harvard Law School, he didn't like what
he saw. The former community activist, then 30, had come fresh from a
term as president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review,
a position he was the first African-American to hold. Now he was ready
to continue his battle to organize Chicago's black neighborhoods. But
the state of the city muted his exuberance....
Today, after three years of law practice and civic activism,
Obama has decided to dive into electoral politics. He is running for the
Illinois Senate, he says, because he wants to help create jobs and a
decent future for those embittered youth. But when he met with some
veteran politicians to tell them of his plans, the only jobs he says
they wanted to talk about were theirs and his. Obama got all sorts of
advice. Some of it perplexed him; most of it annoyed him. One
African-American elected official suggested that Obama change his name,
which he'd inherited from his late Kenyan father. Another told him to
put a picture of his light-bronze, boyish face on all his campaign
materials, "so people don't see your name and think you're some big dark
guy....Chicago Reader: November 13, 1997
Letter to the Editor: Endorsing the IVI-IPO
In the article appearing recently in the Chicago Reader on the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization ["Fighting Over Scraps," November 7], there were a number of quotes attributed to me that I feel need to be placed in the proper context....
Barack Obama State Senator 13th Legislative District
Chicago Reader: March 16, 2000
Two formidable opponents in the race for his congressional seat are banking on it.
... Was this stomping a sign that voters are ready to end
Rush's career in Washington? State senators Barack Obama and Donne
Trotter think so. Both men are anxious to move up to Congress, and they
think 2000 is the year for the coup that will get them there. They're
working hard to finish off the politically wounded incumbent."Congressman Rush exemplifies a politics that is reactive, that waits for crises to happen then holds a press conference, and hasn't been particularly effective at building broad-based coalitions," says Obama, a Harvard-educated lawyer who promises to be more effective in cooperating with whites and Latinos.
Barack Obama
I had established a presence in the
classroom and in other activities during my first year of law school
serving as an editor on the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review,
assisting several professors on their scholarly work, and campaigning
actively on issues of diversity in faculty hiring. As a result, I think
my peers and professors knew that I took my work at the law school
seriously and were less likely to question my qualifications for a spot
on the Review. Moreover, by the time I was elected to the presidency of
the Review, the peers who voted for me had worked with me in close
quarters for over a year and were pretty familiar with my
accomplishments... I have no way of knowing whether I was a beneficiary
of affirmative action either in my admission to Harvard or my initial
election to the Review. If I was, then I certainly am not ashamed of the
fact, for I would argue that affirmative action is important precisely
because those who benefit typically rise to the challenge when given an
opportunity. Persons outside Harvard may have perceived my election to
the presidency of the Review as a consequence of affirmative action,
since they did not know me personally. At least one white friend of mine
mentioned that a federal appellate court judge asked him during his
clerkship whether I had been elected on the merits. And the issue did
come up among those who were making the hiring decisions at the
[University of Chicago] law school — something that might not have even
been raised with respect to a white former president of the Review.
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