Back to School

A week after Allen-Piedra distributed the yellow flier, Kobach still has a copy on his desk. He handles the page as if it's toxic.

"Apparently, she has some emotional investment," he says of Allen-Piedra. "Her husband was removed from this country, and for whatever reason, she's taking her frustration out on me. It's really bizarre how she's throwing all this angry rhetoric on this little paper. She doesn't even know me."

But Allen-Piedra has watched him closely.

When Kobach used his university address on papers filed in the tuition lawsuit — making it appear as if the university were involved in the case — she brought it to Suni's attention. When Kobach introduced himself at a congressional committee in September as a professor of immigration law — even though he'd never taught a class on the subject — she again went to the dean. And since she found out last spring that the school was considering a Kobach-taught immigration class, she's been lobbying Suni against the idea.

Now she's riding a new wave of support from outside UMKC.

"They can try to dismiss it as one law student who doesn't like his teaching, but it's more than one law student," says Conn Felix Sanchez, a Kansas City, Kansas, immigration lawyer. "It's a whole community."

The Hispanic Bar Association of Greater Kansas City and the MoKan chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association are drafting letters to UMKC. The local Coalition of Hispanic Organizations has written to the university, citing fears that Kobach will be "allowed to use university resources to propagandize his anti-immigrant sentiments."

In October, Kansas Rep. Sue Storm, a Democrat from Overland Park, wrote to Suni expressing her "grave concerns" about the course. "I have heard Mr. Kobach provide misleading testimony in Kansas legislative committee hearings, playing to the most extremist and hateful anti-immigrant views," she wrote.

Allen-Piedra has received supportive e-mails from students at universities as distant as Rutgers in New Jersey and the University of California-Los Angeles.

In virtually all correspondence, opposition to the class has been tempered with support for academic freedom and Kobach's right to hold his conservative views.

More than complaining about his political work, lawyers such as Mdivani and Sanchez charge that Kobach is simply unqualified for the position.

By Kobach's count, he has participated in a dozen immigration cases as a consultant and has personally argued five cases of national significance. He hasn't, however, worked as a front-line attorney who helps clients navigate the complex immigration system.

"He may not understand the real world rather than the ivory tower theory," Sanchez says.

Jim Austin, a local immigration lawyer and adjunct professor at UMKC's law school who teaches a class on immigration procedure, calls Kobach "a sideshow."

"He's seen as someone who tries very hard to justify bad immigration policy with weak legal arguments," Austin says.

Suni says legislation classes such as Kobach's are common. But Austin says Kobach's class has an extra attribute that makes the UMKC course distinct: "The difference is, Kobach goes around testifying on its behalf."

Judgment among his colleagues isn't always in Kobach's favor, though.

In a five-page letter to Suni, Roger McCrummen of the local chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association notes that both NSEERS and the BIA reforms were failures. "These disastrous policy decisions result, I believe, either from bias or a serious misunderstanding of the U.S. immigration system," he writes.

McCrummen also cites Kobach's legislative testimony on the in-state tuition issue, when Kobach argued that illegal immigrants should go back to their home countries and apply for F-1 visas to attend U.S. colleges. McCrummen and Mdivani say an F-1 visa doesn't apply to those who want to stay in this country permanently — if they leave the country, F-1 students who are older than 18 have a hard time returning. "As an immigration attorney, if I gave that advice to my clients, I'd be disbarred," Mdivani says.

"Everything he does has been a failure, except for looking very good and sounding very good and having an amazing résumé," Mdivani says.

What most bothers Allen-Piedra is that once he has the immigration course on his résumé, he'll look even better.

"If he's able to say he's a professor of immigration law, it gives him a lot more ammunition," she says. "It's not about academic freedom. It's about an unqualified professor teaching an unnecessary class. I don't care if 20 people are swayed [by his political opinions]. It's going to be 75 percent his fan club, anyway. What I care about is him being able to call himself an immigration law professor and use public resources to hurt my community."

Suni has heard all the arguments and remains adamant that the school has a responsibility to uphold academic freedom and encourage intellectual diversity. She's emphatic that Kobach's student evaluations are without fault and, aside from a small contingent of student activists, she's never received a complaint about his classroom conduct.

But the dean admits that she has mixed feelings about Kobach's activities. She calls Kobach "less engaged" than other faculty members. She is aware that Kobach may have political aspirations that could draw him away from campus, and she fears Kobach's political engagement could cause Hispanic and other minority students to look elsewhere when they're applying to law school.