The headline: Students saw in Professor Obama a pragmatist, not an idealogue
A couple of quotes: The first one sums up his teaching style, and the second one
Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School for a decade before he left in 2003 to run for the U.S. Senate. He emerged as one of the Senate's most liberal members, and his voting record is often invoked in the current campaign, especially by his opponents. But the men and women who studied with him at Chicago echo [U of C law graduate Jaime] Escuder's observation that Obama was much more pragmatic than ideological. Even as his political career advanced, Obama's teaching stuck to the law-school norm of dispassionately evaluating competing arguments with the tools of forensic logic.
"It was drilled into us from Day 1 that you examined your biases and inclinations," said Richard Hess, now an attorney at Susman Godfrey in Houston. "And then, when you made decisions, they were based on sound empirical reasons."
Escuder saw his professor as "a street-smart academic."
When Obama was promoted to the senior lecturer position, he had only taught his seminar on racism and the law. While his teaching schedule expanded to include constitutional law and voting rights, it was his original seminar that left the greatest impression on his students. In the class, Obama emphasized how people's experiences and backgrounds could influence their perceptions of prejudice and the possible need for government action to curb its effects.
"He wanted us to be aware of our biases so we could better avoid the pitfalls they can bring," said a former student, Bethany Lampland, who now practices in New York.
He did that in part by sharing personal stories that revealed preconceptions he himself harbored. In the autumn of 2003, for example, he told of an uncomfortable encounter he had one evening on Lake Shore Drive. An Asian driver in a souped-up Honda cut him off; when the two men reached a stoplight, Obama shot him a dirty look. The driver's response was to roll down his window and yell "nigger" at Obama before speeding off.
The professor described himself as initially shocked. But as he reflected on the episode, he told the class, he realized that the other driver wasn't the only one harboring stereotypes. "I was thinking, 'Here's some Asian kid on his way to a club,"' Obama said, according to Richard Hess, who was enrolled in the course. Obama had stereotyped the driver as the kind of person who would never call him "nigger."
Hess, who worked in Democratic politics before attending law school, told me he was impressed by his professor's ability to coolly analyze such an unpleasant confrontation. "I thought it displayed a thoughtfulness," he said. "He would talk about race in a way that I doubt anyone had heard from their professor before, or I had heard from a politician before."
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