[Houghton M.]

You don’t help your cause with this. “Professor” is used in a variety of ways. That he was not a full professor (which is what the U of C. statement denies) is meaningless. He was not merely an adjunct, which is the lowest rung. If that’s all he had been, calling him a professor would be misleading. But law schools, or at least U. of C. Law school, in order to attract people who want to maintain a career outside the university while lending some sort of prestige to the law school, have categories between regular tenured faculty and mere sessional or adjunct lecturers. It’s my understanding that Obama was in the middle category and was invited many times to come aboard as a tenure-track faculty member but chose not to.

Now, the invitation to become tenure-track undoubtedly was affirmative-action driven and doesn’t mean he was that all-fired great an academic law teacher. I don’t doubt that the U of C Law school was interested in him because of his race and politics. But to imply that he was marginal at the school is inaccurate. He had a fairly high status position and could have turned it into the full-deal, had he wanted to. Whether he was fully qualified for that, is a different question.

[Steve_Seattle]

Part-time lecturer sounds pretty close to the lowest rung to me. And I’ll repeat - if he had a great academic record, he’d have released it long ago.

[Steve_Seattle]

In my experience, here's the ranking in academia:

(Full) Professor
Associate Professor
Assistant Professor
Lecturer
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Unless the U. C. uses non-standard terminology, that would make Lecturer/Part-Time Lecturer Barack Obama near the bottom of the totem pole. He did not seem to be on a career-track there, as evidenced by his lack of published scholarship and his ongoing employment outside the school framework.