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http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_obama_did_hold_the
_title.html

WASHINGTON�The University of Chicago released a statement on 
Thursday saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) �served as a 
professor� in the law school�but that is a title Obama, who 
taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the 
school confirmed on Friday.

�He did not hold the title of professor of law,� said Marsha 
Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and 
Lecturer in Law at the school, on East 60th St. in Chicago

The U of C statement was posted on the school�s website two days 
after the Clinton campaign issued a memo headlined �Just 
Embellished Words: Senator Obama�s Record of Exaggerations & 
Misstatements.� The memo was generated by the Clinton campaign 
as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was put on the defensive 
for claiming incorrectly that she dodged sniper fire while First 
Lady when her plane landed in Bosnia.

Another university spokesman, Josh Schonwald, said the Obama 
campaign did not request that the statement be generated and 
that it was posted because reporters were calling the school 
with questions about Obama�s status. However, the Obama campaign 
was interested in making sure reporters saw the U of C statement.

The university statement said, �From 1992 until his election to 
the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in 
the Law School.� The school probably did not mean to imply that 
Obama became a University of Chicago professor a year out of law 
school. But the word �served� is key�Nagorsky said Obama carried 
out, or served, a function of a professor�teaching a core 
curriculum course while a senior lecturer�while at the same time 
not holding down that rank.

At issue in the Clinton memo was Obama�s claims�mostly 
specifically on several direct mail pieces produced for his 2004 
U.S. Senate race-- that said he was a law professor at the 
university.

Obama graduated Harvard Law School in 1991. He was a lecturer at 
the U. of Chicago law school between 1992 and 1996. During this 
time he was an attorney at the law firm of Miner, Barnhill & 
Galland. In his first years of teaching, he had only one course.

He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1996 and his teaching load 
eventually increased to three courses a year, less than the load 
of a professor. Obama won a state Senate seat in 1996. Obama 
maintained his senior lecturer post from 1996 to 2004, when he 
took a leave to run for the U.S. Senate.

Nagorsky said there is a major distinction between a lecturer 
and senior lecturer, though both are not full-time positions. 
She said the status of a senior lecturer is �similar� to the 
status of a professor and Obama did teach core courses usually 
handled only by professors. While Obama was also part of the law 
school community, his appointment was not part of an academic 
search process and he did not have any scholarly research 
obligations which professors often do.

In August of 2004, I wrote a column about Obama�s U.S. Senate 
campaign literature saying he was a law professor at the U of C 
when he was a senior lecturer on leave at the school. Neither 
the school nor anyone in the Obama campaign complained at the 
time.

The University of Chicago did Obama no favor by saying he was a 
law professor when he wasn�t. This parsing is not necessary. 
There is nothing degrading about being a senior lecturer and 
bringing to students the experience of a professional in the 
field.

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