Obama: A Favorite of Academe Who Once Led Harvard Through a Racial Storm

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.

In the midst of intense campus debates over faculty diversity and other divisive issues, Mr. Obama became the first black student to be elected president of the Harvard Law Review. At the law journal, he presided over difficult discussions among intellectuals with widely different views. Yet his professors say he was able to set an amicable tone and, at the same time, hold fast to his own beliefs.

In the fourth of The Chronicle's series of profiles of the leading candidates for president, we take a look at how Mr. Obama has won the favor of many in academe and the kind of “professorial president” he might make if he were elected.

On our Campaign U. blog we have also published the full transcript of a Q&A we conducted via email with Mr. Obama's campaign. In it, he discusses his views and positions on various higher-education topics, including affirmative action, the federal government's role in reining in college costs, and the importance of education in preparing working families for a global economy.

Tuition Breaks for Children of Illegal Immigrants

The issue of immigration has been particularly divisive within the Republican Party and, today, presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, criticized his GOP opponents for backing tuition assistance for children of illegal immigrants. Usually, what this means is states give students whose parents are illegal immigrants the lower-tuition, in-state status if they meet all other residency and academic requirements. (I blogged about this, too, on my EdWeek blog, Campaign K-12).

Specifically, Romney targeted former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for supporting 2005 legislation in Arkansas that would have granted in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants and former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for supporting a similar policy at City University.

Huckabee has openly defended his support of such measures. Last month, he said on Jim Lehrer's NewsHour:

"You don't punish the child for the parents having broken the law. We don't do that. We don't say, 'OK, your parents broke a law, so we're going to punish you for it.' I just don`t understand why anybody would think that that's a good thing to do."

Policymakers and judges have been wrestling with this for years, which reminds me of the important 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case Plyler vs. Doe. In that case, the justices ruled that no, it wasn't a very good thing for Texas in the mid-1970s to deny a free public education to children of illegal immigrants.

The majority (it was a 5-4 vote) decision states that the state shouldn't have "impose[d] its discriminatory burden on the basis of a legal characteristic over which children can have little control."

Though this is a different situation -- and college aid isn't guaranteed by any state's Constitution -- the fundamental issues are very similar, even decades later.

Report highlights need for preschool access

A new report by The National Institute for Early Education Research likely gives Sen. Hillary Clinton added fuel for her universal preschool initiative. The report notes that minority children, and those from “low-income, poorly educated families” in the West and Midwest, have the least access to quality preschool programs.
Governors across the nation -- including my own state, Virginia -- are trotting out preschool expansion proposals. Presidential candidates are on the preschool bandwagon as well. Clinton is on record with a detailed proposal to provide universal access to preschool, which would reach students highlighted in the NIEER report. To check out the report, visit NIEER here.
~ Cathy

Obama's Plan for Working Families

Barack Obama unveiled a plan yesterday that he pitched as a blueprint for how to help working families “reclaim the American Dream,” including by expanding access to college and better tailoring community-college programs to improve local economies.

Among his proposals, the Democratic senator from Illinois advocated a new tax credit of up to $4,000 per year for college tuition and fees that would be refundable, meaning that people whose income is so low that they do not owe taxes would still be able to benefit.

Mr. Obama said the $4,000 amount is equivalent to two-thirds of the cost of tuition at the average public college in the United States.

The senator also proposed to simplify the process of applying for federal financial aid by eliminating the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, known as Fafsa, and using tax data to determine eligibility instead.

On another front, Mr. Obama said he wanted to help tap the “tremendous resource” of community colleges. He proposed creating a Community College Partnership Program that would help institutions determine what technical and other skills they need to teach their students to help prepare them to work in local industries and to decide in which emerging fields the colleges should begin to offer new programs. The program also would reward colleges that increase their numbers of graduates.

For more news on higher education and the 2008 election, you can also visit The Chronicle's Campaign U. blog.

Romney's "Excellence in Education" Agenda

On the same day we learned that voters in Utah decisively shot down the nation's first universal private-school voucher program, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney—who has significant ties to the state—reiterated today that he will promote school choice as part of his education agenda.

So where was Romney during the voucher fight in Utah? He pretty much kept quiet, despite pleas from voucher advocates to lend his political capital to the fight.

Yet school choice has a prominent role in his education agenda, which he discussed today in South Carolina, along with other hot-button issues, such as merit-pay for teachers and changing the No Child Left Behind act to focus more on individual student progress rather than school progress.

The Next Education President?

My colleague here at Education Week, David Hoff, spearheaded an Election '08 package that debuted this week with a story that gives a comprehensive overview of all of the major presidential candidates and their education platforms. You can read his piece here, check out candidate profiles here, and also peruse our Campaign K-12 blog here.

Obama's a sucker for a reporter in tears

Imagine this -- a presidential candidate who says no questions from the media but then relents just because one of the reporters starts to cry?

That's what happened to Barack Obama in Durham, N.C., Thursday. Of course, the reporter was 5-year-old Hadassah Jones, who was trying to ask him questions on behalf of the Web site brandnewz.com. In the interview, Obama talked up health care and said every child should have a "nice school." (See the resulting video news story here.)

The rest of the media coverage of Obama lately was a bit more grown up.

In New Hampshire, The Citizen newspaper reports five people with education backgrounds in the state have signed on to advise Obama.

Meanwhile, Obama is on a civil rights kick on the campaign trail.

On Friday, his choice of speaking venue harkened to the early days of the school integration fight. Here's what he said on the court house steps in South Carolina:

"Imagine a President who was raised like I was by a single mom who had to work and go to school and raise her kids and accept food stamps for a while. Imagine a President who could go into Holly Courts Apartments here in Manning or Scott’s Branch High School in Summerton,(S.C.) and give the young men and women there someone to look up to. Imagine a President who fought each day to narrow the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be."

He stuck with the civil rights theme throughout the day, and the New York Times reports some of his family tree humor along with a few light touches on education.

This post also appears on my education blog,Get on the Bus
(Image credit: Boston Globe)