The Triangle

Issue date: 4/4/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Karl Kuchs

Sen. Barack Obama's experiences in the classroom will help him greatly in his campaign and potentially in the White House, according to Chapin Cimino Cody, an associate professor at the College of Law and a former student of Obama.

Cody, who took a seminar on "Race and the Law" at the University of Chicago Law School with Obama, said the class allowed students to see a more personal side of Obama.

According to Cody, the class was relatively small, and provided plenty of opportunity for discussion between then-professor Obama and his students.

"A seminar in law school means it was about 12 people," Cody said. "Taking the class gave me a lot of insight into the way he thinks and interacts with people, as well as his judgment, and I got to see that up close. … Because of watching him work at that close proximity, I have always really believed in his judgment. He could talk about sensitive issues without pushing his view, he always questioned us to articulate why we held our views."

Cody said Obama's experience teaching small groups will be beneficial in terms of his presidency.

"You have to facilitate both the interaction of the people in the group and their interaction with the material, and that's not easy," Cody said. "Not to say that every good teacher would be a politician, but in respect to Obama and the way he works with people, I think he's gifted."

According to Cody, Obama was a good teacher not only in his ability to help his students connect with material, but also in his ability to engage students in debate, as well as his manner of handling the class in general.

"He never imposed his view of the world, and that's hard to do in a politically-charge class, which is why I have this sense, overall, of him as a teacher being very thoughtful and challenging us only in the sense of forcing us to articulate why it is we held the views we did," Cody said.

Cody gave one example of a class in which the topic was legislative intent, a "very difficult question."

"I'm sure he disagreed with me, but the way he handled it was to get me to explain why I thought what I thought," Cody said.
Cody said in her personal experience with politics, she realized there is more to electing a president than simply electing the individual Head of State.

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