‘Just Remember, Folks, Nobody Reads It’

June 23rd, 2008 at 08:10am Aaron Chambers

The Politico.com today published a mostly glowing profile of Barack Obama’s time as president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama was the first African-American to head the prestigious student-run publication.

The eight dense volumes produced during his time in charge there — 2,083 pages in all — show the Review to have been a decidedly liberal institution, albeit one in transition as its focus on race and gender was contested by both liberals and conservatives. Under his tenure, the Review published calls to expand the powers of women, African-Americans and the elderly to sue for discrimination.

But Obama, who this March referred to “identity politics” as “an enormous distraction,” was not so easily pinned down. He published a searing attack on affirmative action by a former Reagan Administration official. And when, in an unusual move, he selected a young woman from a non-Ivy League law school to fill one of the Review’s most prestigious slots, she produced an essay focused on individual responsibilities as much as on liberties, which criticized both conservative judges and feminist scholars.

The article quotes scholars whose work the Law Review, under Obama’s direction, published. It also walks through the focus of several of those articles.

It concludes:

In the end, though, Obama’s time on the review mirrored other aspects of his life. Even in the staunchly liberal milieus in which he’s spent his entire adult life, Obama has managed to lead without leaving a clear ideological stamp, and to respect and even at times embrace opposing views. To his critics, that’s a sign of a lack of core beliefs. To his admirers, it’s the root of his appeal.

Entry Filed under: Barack Obama