More interesting than Jodi Kantor’s fluffy New York Times article on Barack Obama’s stint as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School is her accompanying Caucus blog post, which includes a number of the exams and answer memos he prepared. The legal analyses would probably be a bit of a slog for the non-lawyer (and the paper has solicited reax from a range of professors to be published today), but there is at least one question that has a non-legal aspect worth noting.
Rick Ballard flagged Obama’s 1997 Constitutional Law exam, which contained the following hypothetical:
Splitsville is a large Northern city in the State of Wazoo, with a population that is approximately 45 percent black, 40 percent white, and 10 percent Latino, and 5 percent Asian. Like many urban centers, Splitsville has major problems with its public schools.
Specifically, although the Splitsville school district has never operated a system of de jure racial segregation, the school district did enter into a federal consent decree in the early seventies, in response to a lawsuit alleging that it intentionally maintained a de facto system of segregated schools. Under the terms of the federal consent decree, the district was required to create a system of selective magnet schools throughout the city, with voluntary busing for those students interested in attending the magnet schools. The magnet schools were designed to both enhance opportunity for minority students and to promote an integrated learning environment for those students wishing to attend such schools. The school board was also required to institute a range of remedial education and counseling programs targeted at predominantly minority schools.
These programs have not been sufficient to overcome segregated housing patterns and white flight from the public school system, however, and the goal of a genuinely integrated public school system remains elusive…
***
In response to this on-going educational crisis, two black members of the Splitsville School Board two years ago proposed the creation of a pilot all-black, all-male, career academy, to be called ‘Ujamaa School.†The mission of the school, according to the proposal, would be to “foster a spirit of discipline, self-respect, cooperation, and academic excellence among those youth most likely to underachieve.†The school would run from grades one through twelve, and would operate on an “immersion†model of
“African-centered educationâ€Â: while the curriculum would consist of the usual elementary and secondary school fare (i.e. reading, math, social science, etc.), these subjects would be taught using material that emphasize black history and culture in general, and black male achievement in particular. Extra-curricular activities would also be “African-centered,†and would include a mandatory “Rites of Passage†program for older boys that integrated physical education, spiritual training, and community service.
The program would aim to be staffed by all black male teachers; an effort would be made to recruit students from schools with disproportionate numbers of black, low-income and under-achieving students.ÂÂ
Obama asked his students to evaluate not only whether the school could survive a constitutional challenge, but also whether it would be good public policy. In Obama’s answer memo, we can skip over the legal analysis for now to the very brief “answer” he gives on the public policy issue:
I have no model answer for the third question in this part; the purpose of the question was simply to give you an opportunity to consider some of the issues raised above and arrive at your own conclusions. I did find it interesting that, based on a justifiable skepticism in the prospect of truly integrated schools and an equally justified concern over the desperate condition of many inner city schools, a slim majority of you
favored the idea of a Ujamaa-type program (although a far larger majority concluded that as a legal matter the particular program outlined in the hypo couldn’t survive constitutional scrutiny).
In light of Kantor’s main article, it would be tempting to argue that Obama is simply ducking the issue here for political reasons — and that is likely partially true. (On the other hand, if he graded his students as leniently on this question as he is vague with his answer, it would at least suggest that Obama did not attempt to impose his political views on his students.)
While Obama’s answer in the memo is entirely vague on the issue of Afrocentric education, we now know that Obama has views on the subject. For example, last month, Obama heaped praise on a majority-Hispanic charter school in Colorado that adopted an Afrocentic theme for the school year. And of course, Obama spent 20 years in an Afrocentric church — steeped in Black Liberation Theology, complete with its own “Black Values System” — under the spiritual counsel of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama does not seem to have been any more eager to mention his personal experience with Afrocentrism to his students than he has been to answer questions about it from the media he has stonewalled on the subject throught the campaign.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Clearly, you are a racist, and must be denounced.
I don’t know, doesn’t seem all that unitey to me.
Why not just name it the Obama School, promise to find support for it, and abandon the promises as soon as the photo op is complete?
I’m a little disappointed that as a young white man I was never involved in any “rite of passage” for young white men. I’m not sure what that would entail, but it sure sounds like it might be neat. Although, perhaps not all that inclusive.
“however, and the goal of a genuinely integrated public school system remains elusive”
And to remedy this:
“two black members of the Splitsville School Board two years ago proposed the creation of a pilot all-black, all-male, career academy”
Diversity in action.
When our Lord and Master finally takes the oath in January, I’m thinking of applying for starting a Scotch-Irish centric school.
Whiskey and Haggis for lunch and kilts all around.
Who’s with me?
Doesn’t seem much sillier to me than what this clown will no doubt be pushing.
dre,
How are ya gonna make damn certain that “the goal of a genuinely integrated public school system remains elusive†without setting up some Hate Whitey Academies? Look, even Reparations Conyers in Detroit is having problems keeping the serfs collared and contained within the fief. If you educate kids on a truly integrated basis just how in the hell are you gonna be able to keep ’em around the table beggin’ for scraps?
Ya gotta think ahead a little. If you educate the serfs, the ones with half a brain are gonna either run or take a shot at replacing the local Progg Barons. Can’t have that – wouldn’t be prudent. It’s much better to have a rite of passage where the youngsters receive a nice brass collar as the symbol of their loyalty.
EG: I think the rite of passage was drinking beer until you puked. I vaguely recall doing that several times when I was younger.
Eh…looks like a typical con-law hypothetical. It’s highly possible he didn’t even write it himself. It’s directed toward a majority liberal class that would bend themselves over backwards to answere a relatively simple constitutional question in a wat that did not appear un pc.
can.not.spell
Karl, this is just more of you calling Obama a racist than you having a point? (Oh, and by the way, I would love to read the sort of Free Republic legal analysis you could provide on Obama’s questions and answers!)
Imagine being asked a policy question on an exam? Back when I was in law school at Harvard in the 1880’s, we would never be asked anything so revolting in a Constitutional law class as a policy question, especially one that bloggers would use to heal the racial divide).
But, attempting to discern meaning from your “commentary”, are you just saying a) Obama don’t like white folks, and b) you are arming yourself for the coming race war.
Or, maybe, when you said Obama reportedly favored an “afro-centric” curriculum AND was an evil believer in “Black Liberation theology”, you weren’t continuing your constant meme that Obama will oppress white people?
I must say, recent conservative smears (he doesn’t believe anything, he won’t visit troops, he’s never done anything) while equally false, are a little more palatable than your “Obama is John Brown and the election is Harper’s Ferry” theme.
P.S. Liked the “fluffy” adjective, as applied to the NY Times piece, since the story involved libertarian and conservative criticism of Obama by colleagues and students. But, as I’ve learned from reading your “work”, if the piece doesn’t call Obama a dangerous black racist, then it’s “fluffy.”
“…When Obama walked on stage at the McCormick Center, many journalists in the audience leapt to their feet and applauded enthusiastically after being told not to do so. During a two-minute break halfway through the event, which was broadcast live on CNN, journalists ran to the stage to snap photos of Obama. …”
It is truly reaffirming to see these good people think for themselves rather than act as an obedient herd acquiescent to the commands of their tutors, who insist to the contrary that they be stifled. Such stiff boors, the tutors. And to seek to capture that glorious moment of freedom and self-assertion in photos and video, we should mark how delightfully self-aware the free have become in their liberty!
he’s never done anything
That’s a dirty lie, he served 150 some odd days as a US Senator and wrote 2 autobiographies.
Every day since the end of Obama’s European tour I’ve become more and more convinced that the lug nuts holding the wheels on the Obama bus are unscrewing and falling off one by one. What’s the shelf life on Hillary as I’m afraid we’re about to witness some serious buyers remorse. Oh the joy.
From the perspective that schools are failing young men, I like it. Some people with a good track record (and hellbent on making sure math and science don’t take a backseat to pc culture issues) could turn this into a good idea. Of course Bush has a better record for getting things done then Obama.
Was that an Ujamma Tech sweatshirt he was wearing in the b-ball photo op?
And I bet if he was to travel outside the country to say, South Central, or maybe Detroit, he’d just knock ’em dead with his Ebonics as a second language skillz.
Tragedy morphs into parody almost seamlessly, doesn’t it?
If one reads the ’96, ’97 and ’98 exams it becomes rather clear that Obama was (and is) wrapped in a racial cocoon. The moth that we see today is wholly unsurprising except for its attempt to adopt defensive coloration.
To switch metaphors – he has the lamb’s bleat down pat, he just needs to see an orthodontist about those teeth.
Learnedhand,
I guess you missed my post on Obama not endorsing reparations, which has everyone calling me an apologist for Obama.
I didn’t go through the legal analysis because most would find it not only overly technical, but also not particularly illuminating. The point of these types of exams is to argue both sides, so Obama’s answer memos do the same. Perhaps Eastman or Barnett will pluck some interesting nuance from them, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
That’s also why the main piece is “fluffy.” It establishes that Obama was generally liked as a lecturer (big whoop) but didn’t take big stands, most likely due to his political ambitions (shocka).
And the whole bit of accusing me of racism for pointing out that it was Obama who spent 20 years at a race-baiting radical church and treating Rev. Wright as his spiritual adviser? Been done to death, so much so that JD’s comment #1 is the punchline to the joke. I get why people do it though. After all, if the mushy middle ever really figures out that the guy whose campaign is built on being the post-racial candidate who will unify the country was entirely comfy joining a radical, race-baiting church, the Left will be in a bit of a pickle. Thus, anyone who mentions it has to be accused of being a racist in the effort to get them to shut up. It’s an obvious ploy; it works on a lot of people.
“Bush has a better record for getting things done then Obama.”
Fiske Elementary is just a stroll from BHO Manse in Hyde Park. A cursory review of the ISAT results reveals that Bush’s NCLB had a very salutary effect upon student performance. One might contrast that with the results of Obama’s (with the help of domestic terrorist buddies) involvement in the Annenberg Challenge – which is universally conceded to have had no salutary effects whatsoever (aside from keeping the domestic terrorists fed for a bit).
Of course, such a contrast would be wholly racist so I must self denounce for having even raised the possibility.
I wonder what the fight song for Ujamma Tech sounds like?
“Ujaama” — African Socialism — was the brainchild of Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, who, when he retired in 1985, said of his economic policies –“I failed. Let’s admit it.” Guess some Chicago Law School students didn’t hear.
Isn’t Jodi Kantor the journo who done Obama wrong with her early interview of the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, exposing to public view the political machinations behind Obama’s withdrawal of his invitation to the Rev. Wright to intone a benediction at the coming out for President party way back when? And didn’t Rev. Wright launch an accusatory broadside at Ms. Kantor and the NYTimes in response?
“If one reads the ‘96, ‘97 and ‘98 exams it becomes rather clear that Obama was (and is) wrapped in a racial cocoon. ”
The class covers equal protection.
“The class covers equal protection.”
The syllabus (from 1994) for Current Issues in Racism and the Law makes that rather clear. The direction in which “Mr. Chips” Obama was herding students is also clear – and rather different from the “unitey” facade that Axelrod has constructed for him to hide behind. He wove his own cocoon over many years and calling the moth which emerged a butterfly does not make it a butterfly.
“The syllabus (from 1994) for Current Issues in Racism and the Law makes that rather clear. ”
I think thats a different class than the 96, 97, and 98 exams. Those are for constitutional law, which will clearly cover equal protection. So will “current issues in racism and the law.” Probably even more so.
“The direction in which “Mr. Chips†Obama was herding students is also clear – and rather different from the “unitey†facade that Axelrod has constructed for him to hide behind”
Whats the direction and how do you get it from the Syllabus? The article describes someone who even-handedly carried out discussions.
Modern Education:
Rationalizing the failure to teach by reaching for any convenient stereotype. And getting paid more the longer you avoid the core issue, which is that unionized teachers are untouchable and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars across local, state, and federal campaigns to stay that way.
Kids? What damn kids? This is about tenure, and getting into administration and out of the classroom as fast as possible.
The “standard con law hypothetical” accepts without comment that the skin of the kids (and the absence of white skin) is why the schools are failed.
What utter bullshit.
“The article describes someone who even-handedly carried out discussions.”
And Professor Obama’s reliance upon Derrick Bell’s <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theoryCritical Race Theory tells me that the article’s writer wouldn’t recognize “even handed” were it to bite her.
YMMV, of course.
“And Professor Obama’s reliance upon Derrick Bell”
Were do you see a ‘reliance’ on it ?
ha ha, Rick, you’re supposed to trust the reporter’s interpretation, not read the source material.
So pointing out the FACT Obama attended a racist church for 20 plus years makes someone a “crazed anti-Obama frother”? What your saying by this statement is that you have a lower opinion of a future president than yourself. I say yourself because I would hope you would sit in a church with your wife and kids for years listening to someone tell you that teh whitey invented AIDS and the United States of AmeriKKKa was damned to hell. I could be wrong though since you seem to endorse that type of thing.
One question though, which one of McCains faults, which there are many, if you point out makes you a crazed anti-McCain frother? Somehow I doubt there is one.
What I ment was
I say yourself because I would hope you would NOT sit in a church with your wife
My spelling sucks.
Hmmm. If I recall correctly, the Junior prom was this white boy’s “rite of passage”. It was terrible and nothing like what I had envisioned, but at least I had bragging rights from there on in.
Passing “Shop” was my other “rite of passage”.
Reading around the web about this article, I definitely see the picture emerging of an Obama that had many achievements based on the strength of who he was. He was the Law Review guy that never wrote. He was the guy offered tenure although he never published.
It seems so very consistent with his run for the presidency on so few real accomplishments. He hasn’t really needed many in the past, either.
Althouse points out an interesting passage:
Um, can anyone imagine the opposite being acceptable?
Randy Barnett at volokh has his take:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_07_27-2008_08_02.shtml#1217443634
While the course materials themselves do not tell us very much about Senator Obama, the candidate, what they do tell is about Obama, the teacher, is generally favorable. I was particularly intrigued by his 1994 syllabus on “Racism and the Law.†The materials assigned were balanced, including several readings by Frederick Douglass, who many modern race theorists have come to disparage as insufficiently radical (as Obama would know), along with an exchange between Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy on the one hand and Charles Cooper (who is now on Senator McCain’s advisory committee) and Texas law professor Lino Graglia on the other. All three essays appeared in the conservative/libertarian Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy as part of a 1991 symposium on “The Future of Civil Rights Law†and were initially presented at the Federalist Society’s 1990 National Student Symposium held at Stanford. The articles were published during Obama’s third year as a law student so it is not surprising that he would be aware of them. And they would have been fresh at the time they were assigned.
… [more at the link]