Although the new presidential administration is closely tied to higher education, Duke professors do not expect Barack Obama and Joe Biden to show them special favor next semester.
The United States has seen its fair share of presidents and presidential advisers steeped in academia. But experts at Duke say that the new Obama-Biden duo is not likely to place higher education near the top of its political agenda.
President-elect Obama spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School as a professor of Constitutional law, after receiving degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School.
His wife, Michelle Obama, holds a part-time position as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Vice president-elect Biden is an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law and his wife teaches English at Delaware Technical & Community College.
"The first black president had to be too smart, too intellectual, too disciplined, too ambitious in order to break stereotypes and be elected," said Jerry Hough, James B. Duke professor of political science.
Obama's educational background is especially noteworthy because of his childhood, said Kristin Goss, assistant professor of public policy and political science.
Obama was abandoned by his father, raised by a single mother, then taken in by financially struggling grandparents. Yet, he ended up at Columbia, Harvard and Chicago, and now will take the helm at the White House.
"His life story vividly reminds us that higher education is the ticket to the American dream," Goss said.
But she and others admit that Obama needs to be careful about flaunting his superior intellect, and must now adopt both a persona and a vocabulary that will strike mainstream Americans as more like them.
"Americans have great ambivalence about elite education. They want their kids to achieve it, but they are suspicious of others who do," Goss said.
Although Goss and Hough both said Obama has benefited intellectually from his elite educational background, some believe that the "professorial" demeanor, which he has at times shown the public, may hinder his ability to govern effectively.
And some past presidents have been criticized for showcasing their higher education credentials, noted Peter Feaver, Alexander F. Hehmeyer professor of political science, who served in the White House during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Feaver said he fears Obama is headed down the same road as those past presidents whose academic prowess worked against them.
"We have had one president who made his mark as an academic leader, Woodrow Wilson, and it was generally thought that his academic background proved something of a liability when it came to being president," Feaver wrote in an e-mail.
But Kerry Haynie, associate professor of political science, said good communication skills are the most crucial part of governing, regardless of one's higher education background.
"It is not a problem for [Obama] to come off as professorial if the content of his messages is digestible by a broad cross-section of the people," he wrote in an e-mail.
Feaver noted that Biden is already adept at adopting verbal tics designed to make him appeal to average Americans. Biden went to "great lengths" in one vice presidential debate to cater his speaking form to what one expert believed was that of an eighth grader, Feaver said.
Regardless of governing style, though, many wonder if Obama's passion for academia will influence him to push for higher education reform. Although Obama has mentioned the importance of increasing access to colleges, and he briefly proposed tax credits for tuition, he did not focus on higher education in his campaign-nor has he discussed it much since.
"I have no doubt that Obama would like to push forward goodies for higher education, but his ability to do so will be constrained by the broader economic and financial constraints he will face," Feaver said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.