Emory instructor recalls Obama the law teacher

When Michael S. Kang teaches election law at Emory University, he tries to emulate the technique of the man who taught him: President-elect Barack Obama.

Kang, 35, a Chicago native, studied Constitutional law under Obama, then a state senator and part-time teacher at the University of Chicago’s law school.

Obama led his class through the 14th amendment and its guarantees to equal protection and due process, Kang said. Race, gender, voting rights, abortion, privacy issues — all were part of the discussion.

As a teacher, Kang said, Obama encouraged civil debate without taking a clear position himself.

“We were able to have a really thorough discussion without rancor,” Kang said.

Kang was in a North Carolina hotel on his way to begin his faculty position at Emory’s law school in 2004 when he heard Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention.

“I remember thinking he had hit the big time,” Kang said, “that he would be a presidential contender, if not in 2008, then later.”

Kang said that although Obama matured as a candidate over the course of the lengthy campaign, he still seemed to be essentially the same person as the professor back in Chicago.

“He has a natural confidence and ease about him that hasn’t changed,” Kang said. “I think he’s comfortable in his own skin. That’s who he is.”

Kang said he tries to follow Obama’s classroom example of fostering respectful discussion among students with diverse opinions.

Asked whether someday his students might see Kang on the political scene and remember him as their teacher, Kang said he had no such national ambitions.

“But,” he said, “I would be glad if students thought back on my classes the way I think back on Barack Obama’s.”