The College Fix

In an article that contradicts earlier reports of Barack Obama’s career as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Charles C. Johnson reports that the law school did not offer Obama a tenured position.

A longtime professor and one-time dean of the University of Chicago Law School told The Daily Caller that Barack Obama was never offered tenure, despite the assertions of a New York Times reporter who covers the president and the first family.

“Other faculty members dreamed of tenured positions; [Obama] turned them down,” wrote Times White House Correspondent Jodi Kantor, author of “The Obamas,” in a July 30, 2008 profile of the president’s twelve years as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

And yet, according to longtime University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, Obama was never actually offered a tenured faculty position. Nor, for that matter, was he ever a “constitutional law professor.”

“I have no idea where Jodi got her story” about the tenure offer, said Epstein, adding that he immediately wrote Kantor to tell her she was wrong.

“Tenure offers require votes from faculties approved by the provost, and need a scholarly output. He was approached with the possibility of an entry level position without tenure, but it never got to the faculty for want of interest on his side,” Epstein confirmed via email.

Epstein was the law school’s interim dean during 2001. His account contradicts a claim Kantor has repeatedly made, that a tenure offer came from Dean Daniel Fischel.