Obama, Once a Leader at Harvard Law, Is Now a Favorite of Academe

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Article: An Interview With Barack Obama: 'The Most Important Skill Is Knowledge'

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By SARA HEBEL

One of the early tests of Barack Obama's political skills came when he was a law student at Harvard University in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Gaining the support of both progressive and conservative editors, Mr. Obama was selected as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He had decided to seek the post believing that he might help ease ideological tensions at the journal even as the campus was embroiled in divisive doctrinal and political debates over issues like faculty diversity.

The uproar included the protests of Derrick A. Bell Jr., the first black professor to win tenure at the law school, who took an unpaid leave of absence and eventually resigned over the lack of a tenured black woman on its faculty.

In the midst of those battles, Mr. Obama presided over difficult debates among intellectuals with wildly different and intensely held views. Yet he was able to set an amicable tone at the journal, according to Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law professor who taught Mr. Obama and served as his mentor.

Mr. Ogletree and others who have known Mr. Obama, now a U.S. senator from Illinois, say his record at Harvard provides an indication of how he might govern as president.

The editors of the law journal "saw him as a coalescing force around which they could come together and do high-quality work," Mr. Ogletree says. "He was able to gently steer them without anyone feeling compromised or undermined in their views."

At the same time that he brought people together, Mr. Obama, the son of a black father, from Kenya, and a white mother, from Kansas, also held fast to his own beliefs, Mr. Ogletree adds. For instance, he publicly supported Mr. Bell's quest for diversity at Harvard, likening the importance of the professor's stand to that of Rosa Parks.

'Friends' on campuses

Mr. Obama, 46, is often described as professorial in style, apt to delve into the complexities of topics and more adept at engaging in lengthy policy discussions than in producing sound bites. In fact, he has worked in college classrooms, serving since 1993 as a senior lecturer on constitutional law at the University of Chicago (he is now on leave from that job).

In many ways, the Democrat has become the darling of higher education among the presidential candidates. College employees donated nearly $2.2-million to Mr. Obama as of September 30, more money than they gave to any other contender for the White House, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group. He also has a strong following among youth, attracting more than three times as many supporters on Facebook and almost 30 percent more "friends" on MySpace than the next-closest competitor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, reports TechPresident, a blog that monitors how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the Web. The online social-networking sites are popular among college students and recent graduates.

William R. Harvey, president of Hampton University, a private, historically black institution, is among Mr. Obama's top donors from academe. He and his wife, Norma, have given $4,600 to the senator's presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Harvey, who held a fund-raising lunch at his home for Mr. Obama this summer, likes the senator's policy stances, especially his support for more money for science, engineering, and technology programs at historically black colleges, for federal research, and for improving teacher training.

Mr. Obama, the college president says, is a candidate "who can clearly bridge many divides and can bring people together: men and women, young and old, black and white, haves and have nots, Democrats and Republicans." He says close to one-third of the 125 attendees at his lunch, who paid at least $1,000 per person, were Republicans.

Congressional Record

Before Mr. Obama enrolled at Harvard, he earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Columbia University in 1983 and worked as a community organizer for a church-based group in Chicago. After earning his law degree, in 1991, he returned to Chicago, where he practiced civil-rights law before winning a seat in the Illinois State Senate, serving for eight years. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

In Congress he has sought to expand access to college by pressing for an increase in the maximum Pell Grant and introducing a bill that would allow financially needy high-school students with no access to Advanced Placement courses to apply for federal aid to attend community-college classes.

"Higher education is the long-term solution to reversing the income disparities that have stretched the middle class to the breaking point," Mr. Obama said in a Chronicle interview conducted via e-mail. "We must increase access."

The senator also touts an idea he pressed, a version of which was included in the Senate bill to renew the Higher Education Act, that would put more emphasis on providing mentors to new teachers as a way to improve their training.

To help finance his education priorities, Mr. Obama supports cutting banks out of the student-loan system, thereby eliminating billions of dollars in government subsidies to private lenders. Some public-policy analysts have praised that proposal (also advocated by other Democrats), saying it would help reduce inefficiencies in the student-loan system. Private lenders oppose the idea, arguing that interest rates would rise under a government-run student-loan monopoly.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama last week announced a broad plan that he said would help working families "reclaim the American dream." One way to do so, he said, is to make it easier for them to attend college. He proposed creating a tax credit, worth up to $4,000 per year, for tuition. The credit would be refundable, so people would benefit even if their incomes were too low for them to owe taxes.

The senator also advocated a Community College Partnership Program, which would help the institutions determine how they could expand degree programs and technical training to better prepare students for jobs in emerging fields in their communities. The program also would reward colleges that increased the number of students they graduate.

During his campaigning last month, Mr. Obama jumped into a contentious debate over immigration. He urged California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, to sign legislation that would have made some illegal immigrants eligible for the state's need-based aid program. The governor vetoed the measure.

Support for Affirmative Action

Over time, Mr. Obama has also been a consistent supporter of affirmative action.

Last year he recorded a radio ad that urged Michigan voters to reject Proposal 2, a ballot measure to prevent public colleges and other state agencies from operating programs that grant preferences based on race, ethnicity, or gender. Voters approved the ban.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama has reiterated his support for colleges' use of racial preferences in admissions. But, he says, colleges should also expand educational opportunities among financially needy students of all ethnicities.

"To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socioeconomic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience, and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right," Mr. Obama wrote via e-mail.

At the same time, he added, "we should work to build an America where the qualified white student from rural South Carolina who worked hard to beat the odds, and the qualified black student from the South Side of Chicago who did the same, can attend classes together, learn from each other, teach their classmates a thing or two and vice versa, and together go off into the world prepared for a diverse work force."

In a May interview, George Stephanopoulos, of ABC News, asked Mr. Obama whether the senator's two daughters should benefit from affirmative action when the time comes for them to go to college. Mr. Obama responded by saying they "should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged."

Ward Connerly, a critic of affirmative action who led efforts to get Proposal 2 on the Michigan ballot, praised Mr. Obama for that response. He called it a "fairly bold statement" and said it demonstrated that the senator understands the nuances of the issue.

A 'Professor President'

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama's penchant for seeking out many views, including from those with whom he disagrees, has brought criticism to his campaign. For instance, he has said that as president he would sit down with controversial world leaders, such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, in an effort to shore up America's leadership by negotiating with friends and foes alike.

Both Republicans and fellow Democrats harshly criticized that approach to foreign policy. Ms. Clinton, who is leading in current polls for the Democratic nomination for president, called Mr. Obama's position "naïve and irresponsible."

Mr. Obama's supporters, though, say his stance is evidence of the open-minded, intellectual approach he would take to the presidency. As he demonstrated at Harvard, Mr. Obama's strengths as a leader include his ability to engage people who hold various viewpoints, scrutinize their ideas, and forge rational solutions, says John K. Wilson, a student of Mr. Obama's at Chicago who recently wrote Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest (Paradigm).

"In the best sense of the word," Mr. Wilson says, "he would be a professor president."