The Scottish Law professor who moulded the young Obama

[Ichingcarpenter]

HE HAS NAMED MARTIN LUTHER King and Edward Kennedy among his political heroes, but presidential candidate Barack Obama was also influenced by the Scottish mentor who helped him achieve his law degree.

Ian Macneil, a 79-year-old academic with dual British and US citizenship, was one of Obama's professors at Harvard Law School in the late 1980s.

In an interview with the Sunday Herald, the Edinburgh-based professor emeritus said he spotted Obama's potential in class and told his wife his student was going to be the US's first black president. He also said his young charge had a "commanding presence" and did not like to be interrupted when in full flow.


Obama's roots - his father was from Kenya, while he himself was born in Hawaii - have been well publicised, but his links to a Scottish law professor have never been written about.

Macneil was teaching at Northwestern University, Illinois, when he secured a visiting professorship at Harvard in 1988. His one-year stint at the Ivy League institution coincided with Obama entering the Harvard Law School after working as a community organiser in Chicago.

As one of Obama's law professors, Macneil, who now lives in the Grange area of Edinburgh, taught the future presidential candidate a course on contract law. He says of his young student: "It was early on in the year when I first met Barack. It wasn't a class where you got to know people well, but you do pick people out over the period of a year.

"What I remember about him was that he was a calm person in a class that was not altogether characterised by people being calm."

On Obama's qualities, he recalls: "He came across as a person of strong character, that is what I noticed. I began to conclude that he was a person of not just strong character, but as a person of real honest-to-God integrity. It was certainly what attracted me to him, that he was very straightforward."

At one point during the year Macneil told his wife that he had come across a future president.

"You see people in classes like that and you get a sense of what they are like. I must have known that Barack had been involved in poverty work - he was a little older than some students - and that he had a political map," he says.

"I remember going back to my wife and saying I think I have just found America's first black president'. He had such a commanding presence."

The law professor recalls one specific occasion when Obama caught his eye: "I was always a little too impatient in class, so if students went off the track I would interrupt before I should. When I did that with Barack, he said let me finish'. He wasn't rude, just firm. Students didn't do that, and I was quite impressed."

He added: "He was just someone who stood out. It was also obvious that his class respected him."

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2326542.0.the_scottish_professor_who_moulded_the_young_obama.php

[Snarkoleptic]

1. If law school is not taught by the Scottish, it's crap...

[gullwing300]

5. And if whisky isn't made by them...........same thing.

:D

[IsItJustMe]

2. K&R

Nice little treasure you found there. These background pieces always give me more insight than what the candidates usually say. Thanks.

[Bozita]

3. Compare that review to the one a Harvard prof gave of his pupil, George W. Bush.

I do recall that he had a Japanese surname. I'm looking for it now.

[pnorman]

8. Yoshi Tsurumi was his name, and this is what he wrote:

Hail to the Robber Baron?

Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.

In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.

Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.

Business education has also produced former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling and other MBAs behind the malfeasances of Tyco, HealthSouth, Haliburton, AIG, and WorldCom. Many executives of corporate America who hold MBAs have also been engaged in the unethical acts of raiding their corporate treasuries at the expense of employees and stockholders. Emulating President Bush’s hubris, a multitude of CEOs in corporate America give themselves obscenely large bonuses that have little to do with their performance. In 1980, the CEOs of Fortune 500 large corporations received, on average, 70 times larger annual compensations than their average employees. Under the Bush Administration, comparable CEOs have come to give themselves 600 to 1,000 times larger annual compensations than their rank-and-file employees whose pay has stagnated. To pay for such self-dealt compensations, corporate aristocrats layoff their workers, cut ordinary employees’ health benefits, and outsource jobs abroad. Under the Bush Administration, over five million Americans have lost their health benefits, and the U.S. has lost over 2.7 million quality manufacturing jobs. President Bush and his rapacious “captains of piracy” of corporate America are destroying America’s democracy built up since Roosevelt’s New Deal era.
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http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=506836

That also came to my mind, as it no doubt did to others following this thread.

pnorman
PS: Thanks to the OP, for this. I had no idea of that, but by now am not surprised. I've Google-Bookmarked it.

[Bozita]

12. I thank you. That's ESSENTIAL reading.

[Fleshdancer]

4. WOW. That gave me chills

Ok then. I just emailed that article to everyone I know.

:wow:

[malaise]

6. A very believable story

I'm very good at spotting the best and worst qualities of my students.

Bravo Prof!!

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. I researched the professor and he has one book on Amazon

On Arbitration..... one of my favorite subjects in Law.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Arbitration-Law-Reformation-Nationalization-Internationalization-Macneil/dp/0195070623/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212890921&sr=1-1

[lildreamer316]

9. Psst...molded, not moulded.

Sorry to be picky, but one thing that proudly differentiates us from the Freepers is our ability to spell correctly...

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. Obviously you know nothing about "English" Spellings vs. American

Sorry to be a prick......... But that was a condensing worthless ignorant injection.

The title was from a Scottish Paper.

[lildreamer316]

11. ..and I was supposed to know this how?

The "Scotland's Award-Winning Independent Newspaper" is very small print at the top of the link; and I would have expected to read the link for my info completely IF this were posted in Latest Breaking News. As it was, I read the summary provided instead, since there is not a three-paragraph limit such as there is in LBN. I am used to reading articles like this on their original page, where I would have discovered that it was actually taken from a paper IN Scotland. It is a mistake that many could have made. I don't like giving the opposing side fuel for the fire, no matter how petty. Point of pride. They certainly won't take the time to differentiate.

Lighten up. And try looking at it from a different perspective.

[Ichingcarpenter]

13. Psst..........You are the one accusing me

Of feeding the freepers because of my so called ignorance on correct spelling.......... So yes you did insult me
with your inability to look at the link and read it before you made a judgmental call.


I will never do my titles now in the queens english and always consult your royal input before hand.
Oh, you know what? ............ It seems your point of pride has nothing to do but point at false pride.
So I still find your non apology explanation empty and hollow.


Now,............... What about the fricking article?

[NorthernSpy]

14. much furore about naught...

'At'll do, Lildreamer. 'At'll do.


:boring: