Back to School

It's a Thursday morning at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, and the halls are awash with a yellow flier exposing a popular professor's extracurricular activities.

The yellow paper is scattered on tables in the ground-floor lounge, where students are grabbing free pieces of pizza. The crowd shuffling between classes is dotted with yellow, as students read the handout and stuff it into their thick casebooks.

Outside the 12:40 p.m. constitutional law class, students study the yellow sheet as though they're cramming for a midterm. It takes aim at their professor: Kris Kobach.

"You've probably heard about the controversy surrounding Kobach's Immigration Law and Policy class scheduled for next semester," the flier begins. It charges that the tenured professor crafted bad laws while working for the Department of Justice. It claims that Kobach inflated his credentials and misrepresented his scholarship in the area of immigration law. It suggests that, as a paid employee of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Kobach will inject anti-immigrant bias into his recently approved course on immigration policy.

"Tell Dean Suni and Chancellor Bailey that university resources should not be used for personal political gain," the leaflet urges.

In the back of Kobach's classroom, three students discuss the accusations.

"So what? Are they going to be standing outside with protest signs," one student asks in a mocking tone.

"Maybe they'll come in and try to heckle him," another adds with a smirk.

"Dude, the guy ran for Congress," the third says. "I don't think he's going to care about some flier."

Kobach strides in a few minutes late. Wearing khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt, he has a stack of papers in his left hand and his cell phone pressed to his right ear. As he erases the white board, finishes the call and snaps the phone shut, he barely glances down at his materials before launching into his lecture.

Kobach banters about landmark legal decisions as if he's telling a barroom story; other times, he talks so fast he trips on his words. He annotates his speech with broad arm motions. He changes direction so quickly that his tie swings like a pendulum. Even as the majority of computer screens betray students checking their e-mail or surfing MySpace pages, the animated professor keeps his audience from tuning out completely.

And, as if out of respect, there isn't a hint of yellow on the tables.

In fact, before Kobach has finished his lecture, e-mails in support of the conservative professor begin filling the in box of Ellen Suni, dean of the law school.

"I found the memo and its accusations a despicable and cowardly act of individuals who are so insecure in their own beliefs that they are intolerant of any challenge to them," third-year student Fawzy Simon writes.

"I hear enough trash talk on the radio," third-year student Ben Gatrost notes, "and I don't need to get it at school, where I am paying to attend."

Simon and Gatrost lash out first, but Suni will receive dozens more favoring Kobach.

Two days later, a third-year law student — a self-professed liberal and member of the UMKC chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union — posts his own flier backing Kobach.

"Tell Dean Suni and Chancellor Bailey that you believe Professor Kobach can teach a subject he is passionate about well, and that law students can tell when they're being fed a line," urges Steven Long.

Suni replies with a mass e-mail, assuring students that Kobach's upcoming course — which is already full, with several students on a waiting list — will be taught as planned starting on January 9.

It's been more than two years since Kobach grabbed national headlines. In May 2004, he sued the state of Kansas for granting in-state tuition to children of undocumented immigrants. That August, he was allowed 47 seconds to address the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden. In November, he lost a congressional race to Democrat Dennis Moore by 11 percent after the incumbent accused him of ties to white supremacists.

Now Kobach keeps a lower profile. But to his supporters and critics, he has become the hardest-working activist in the anti-illegal-immigration movement.

"You know what I call him?" asks his secretary, Debra Banister, speaking in a hushed tone like a child about to give up a long-held secret.

"Superman."

Kobach calls himself something else. One night in October at the Northland's Anita B. Gorman Park, Kobach gave a speech that fired up a small group of activists holding white candles and carrying homemade signs ordering illegal aliens to leave American soil.

Watch footage of a Kobach speech.

At this "Vigil to Save the American Worker," Kobach worked the crowd like a motivational speaker.

He invoked Winston Churchill. "He said that his definition of a fanatic is 'someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.' And friends, if that's what a fanatic is, then I guess I'm a fanatic. Because, when it comes to restoring the rule of law, I can't change my mind and I won't change the subject."

It's speeches such as this one that anger Jessica Allen-Piedra, the person responsible for the yellow flier.