Did Barack Obama go to Columbia?

Unqualified Reservations ^ | 10/31/08 | Mencius Moldbug

[pissant]

I know. I swore that my evil demagogic talents would go unused in this volatile, historic, and deliciously operatic election. And we'll certainly have a fun discussion after the event.

At the moment, though, I find myself tussling with a question I'm not sure anyone has seriously asked. And I just can't resist.

My question is: was Barack Obama ever a student at Columbia? Because here's how one scurrilous compendium of racist smears puts it:

Obama graduated from Columbia College in 1983, and after spending a year in New York, moved to Chicago.

Wayne Allyn Root says, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever! ... Nobody recalls him. I'm not exaggerating, I'm not kidding.

Questioner: Were you the exact same class?

Root: Class of '83 political science, pre-law Columbia University. You don't get more exact than that. Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, 20th reunion, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! Who was he, and five years ago, nobody even knew who he was... the guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him. Is that not strange? It's very strange...

When asked about his undergraduate training at Columbia University, The New Times states that Obama "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."

Many of his classmates don't remember Obama. He's not in the yearbook. Columbia couldn't find a picture of him at school.

What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him.

Does this ring true for you? Does it even pass the laugh test?

Barack or Barry - note that he is still Barry while at Occidental; at the next place we know he existed, Harvard Law, he has become Barack - spends two years at Columbia. He presumably receives two years worth of college credits. By taking two years worth of college courses.

Furthermore, in every other period of his life, he is known as the gregarious and charismatic young man he obviously was. Nor can his looks be described as ordinary. Nor is even his name ordinary. This man is a future president. And no one remembers him? No one?

What is the chance that a budding young politician of undeniable talent and promise spends his junior and senior years at Columbia, and no one remembers him? What is the chance that my right ass cheek, through spontaneous quantum vibration, suddenly transmutes into a hemisphere of polished gold? Don't you feel these probabilities are at least roughly comparable?

I can speak slightly to this issue, because while Obama (purportedly) was a transfer student at Columbia in 1981, I was a transfer student at Brown in 1989. It is certainly easy to disappear into the void as a transfer, because most everyone acquires their principal social networks as a freshman. I am also a naturally reticent person who was quite a bit underaged, and I have to say that if anyone "lived like a monk" it was me (although I was in the CS lab, not the library). And I certainly have no plans to seek political office!

Nonetheless, if you were a major media organization, and you went looking for people who were at Brown in the late '80s and early '90s, and asked them if they remembered Mencius Moldbug - giving my real name, of course - you would find them. Easily. Very easily.

So let me ask anyone who cares to comment below. How, exactly, do we - the American people, Lord help us - know that Barack Obama attended Columbia? Or, more precisely: why should we assume, on the basis of the evidence that we have, that he did? Do we seriously believe it is possible for a future President to be unremembered at his alma mater?

What we know is that a Columbia spokesman has confirmed that Obama attended Columbia. If we're lucky, this means precisely one thing: someone at Columbia went over to a file cabinet, opened it, and found a file that looked basically right. Which is more likely: that no one remembers one of the most articulate and talented black students on an Ivy League campus? Or that someone planted a file or two?

WikiCU, the Columbia wiki, in a paragraph which is of course completely unsourced, contains names of two individuals whom it claims claim to remember him (Michael Baron, a professor and contributor, and Michael Wolf, former president of MTV). They

confirm that he was a brilliant, standout student and that he was an active participant in seminars. Baron said he was one of the top one or two students in his class.

No wallflower, in other words. And despite this - no one else remembers him. (Nor did the NYT find Messrs. Baron and Wolf - at least, not on the first pass.) Does this make you less suspicious? Or more? WikiCU is also oddly tentative about a couple of other things:

Obama claims to have participated to some extent in anti-apartheid activities with the Black Students Organization, but no one is quite sure.

He majored in PoliSci, and claims to have concentrated in "International Relations," (now International Politics - this is a subfield of the PoliSci major and should not be confused with a "concentration," the Columbia term that substitutes for what most schools term a "minor").

"Claims." "To some extent." "No one is quite sure." And his concentration is not a concentration at all. You don't smell anything here? You don't detect perhaps a little teensy bit of an odor?

If we rule out the impossible, we have to accept the improbable. In my mind, knowing what I know (if anyone has better information, hopefully they will post it in the comments), it is close enough to impossible that Barack Obama went to Columbia, that I'm willing to say the unsayable and theorize about what else might have happened. Yes, I realize that this makes me a racist.

My guess is that young Barry dropped out of Occidental in '81, not to go to Columbia, but to go to New York and be a black revolutionary bohemian. We know he was a red-diaper baby (no shame in that - my father's parents were CPUSA members), and we know he was involved with an SDS splinter group at Occidental. Zombie has a very interesting timeline of his time in New York, during which it seems very probable that Obama met Bill Ayers. She also links to a completely unsubstantiated and irresponsible speculation that Obama was a roommate of Ayers and Dohrn - which I'm afraid can't help but remind me of this chilling story. Yes, these people are that evil.

What's certain is that whenever they met, Obama and Ayers did not just "meet." At least until Obama was actually elected to state office, their relationship cannot have been one of equals. Ayers was the warlord of the Weathermen. Since that time, probably everyone in his social network, and certainly everyone younger than him, has been a supporter, groupie, protege, or what have you. Ayers is a celebrity of the Left. Celebrities have peers, and celebrities have entourages. There is never any doubt over who is which.

And for those of you still convinced that Obama and Ayers were "neighbors," note that Obama almost certainly worked out of Ayers' office for three years. If you know anything about the granting process, the relationship between Ayers' "Small Schools Workshop" (educacion es revolucion!) and Obama's Annenberg Challenge is obvious: the AC was a funded grant proposal out of Ayers' office. An organizational bud or pseudopod, basically. So under this scenario, Ayers is Obama's professional mentor for at least fifteen years. (And if that doesn't bother you, cue up Larry Grathwohl.)

My guess - not because I have any reason to believe that this specifically is what happened, but just because every other explanation I can think of strikes me as less probable - is that Obama, as a young black radical with SDS credentials and obvious talent and potential, found it relatively trivial to earn quick admission to the inner circle, spent two years as a gofer, intern, catamite, or what have you for the Ayers crime family, and was rewarded by the gift of a Columbia degree and a ticket to Harvard Law.

Did Bill Ayers have connections in the administrative staff at Columbia? It would be remarkable if he didn't. Folks, the Movement was the center of the universe in 1968. If you were one of the top hundred people in it, let alone Bill Ayers, you were the giant glowing sun in the core of your social galaxy. You were a stud beyond studs. You had friends everywhere.

And would someone who blows up police stations blanch at planting a file? Honestly, can we even be confident that the staff at Columbia looked at the file? Who are they, and how do we know them? Again: why do we believe that Barack Obama attended classes at Columbia?

Moreover, a bogus Columbia degree is exactly the sort of thing an ambitious person can get away with in this world. Especially an ambitious black person. Everyone hates to be a racist. Of course, you have to have a serious pair of brass balls, but I think we know Obama has those.

But running for president? And, seemingly, winning? Is it possible? It would certainly be something new under the sun, that's for sure. But semper aliquid novi, as they say.

The story is easy to check. Just ask Barack Obama to tell us the names of some of his classes and professors at Columbia. He may not have had friends, but he took classes from professors. Then, find the professors and students. Not just one of each. All of them. (For example, there were apparently only seven other students, presumably all jealous of the One's rapierlike wit, in Michael Baron's seminar.) Interview these people. Take depositions, if needed. Ask them if they remember Barry. Or Barack. Or whatever he was calling himself at the time. If not...

Of course, the One is scheduled to be elected President in a few days. So he may not find the time to answer. But does it matter? All this will be so much more fun after the election.

And in case it matters, no: I don't really believe Barack Obama is the Manchurian Candidate. If I had to bet, I would bet that Steve Sailer has him pegged: Obama is Gatsby. I think Obama is a man without qualities, a person of no particular character or perspective, who is very good at conforming to the expectations of whatever context he finds himself in. I think he wound up in Ayers' circle just because he's a climber, and that was the handiest pole to climb. I think that in an Obama administration the White House will revert to its long-term trendline of becoming a basically ceremonial and functionless agency. I think, I think, I think.

But I don't know. And that worries me a little. Doesn't it worry you too? A little? Just a little?

[PhilDragoo]

Not a Manchurian Candidate?

There's no birth certificate--he was born in Kenya of an American mother indoctrinated by her Communist father and Communist high school, and a Kenyan father who studied Russian to serve the Mau Mau Soviet butcher Kenyatta.

He sings the Muslim call to prayer in perfect Arabic, is the type of "Christian" who believes America must be destroyed, is grafted on the gluteus to the moving force of the Maoist American front.

He is flakked by the son of sleepers who got his tribcrib from another sleeper.

His main mentor for nine years was the Communist pervert Davis.

He is endorsed by Chia, Fidel, Imajihadbob, HamasHamoHamat, Fairycon, and QuackDaffy.

He speaks either hypnotic rhythmic drivel or key Commie cliches.

He is Saul Alinsky without the trenchcoat and fedora.

Enough with this "he's not a Manchurian Candidate"--

It is what it is--

--and what it is is the anti-Constitutionalist.

[Calpernia]

>>>Did Bill Ayers have connections in the administrative staff at Columbia? It would be remarkable if he didn’t. Folks, the Movement was the center of the universe in 1968.

Related, whole thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1752044/posts
Columbia Defends Its Nazi Links: “Everyone Was Doing It”

[Calpernia]

Seems fake degrees are quite the trend amongst officials. Silly us, still paying back our college loans. We should have taken the easy route.

http://www.njsendems.com/release.asp?rid=2463
TURNER: FAKE DEGREES FROM DIPLOMA MILLS ‘EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE’

[Calpernia]

>>>I read a post somewhere by someone who basically placed Hussein mere blocks away from the Brinks armored car heist by the W.U. that resulted in the murder of two NYC police officers and a Brinks guard.

Ironic that one of those fine terrorists names was Odinga too.

I never heard that name before. Since Obama became a candidate, now I’ve heard it twice.

[BIGLOOK]

What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends.

Well, Columbia is located between Morningside Heights and Harlem. Don't think he lived in Morningside Heights though.

[potlatch]

Lets  BLOW his house down!

[Kenny Bunk]

So lissen. It turns out this joker was at Columbia General Studies not the real Columbia. So it is natural that the real, genuine Ivy Leaguers in the undergraduate program at Columbia University wouldn't know him. Now, add to these inconvenient facts the fact that his name was "Barry Soetoro" at the beginning of the adventure, and "Barack Hussein Obama" when he was mysteriously admitted to Harvard Law. We do know he was heavily involved with "Black Studies," or whatever the hell they called it then, and his undergrad thesis was more than likely a fire-breathing, anti-whitey screed.

Also rather inconveniently, Bernadine Dohrn's sister was a Columbia faculty member. Just a coincidence. That Bernadine Dohrn was mentoring Michelle Obama at the same time is also just a coincidence. Of course, to a racist curmudgeon, it might plausibly seem that both of these affirmative action babies were a creation of this bomb-making dynamic radical duo.

Certainly not I. Dedicated to diversity as I am, I certainly welcome anyone born in Kenya to an unmarried 17-year old American, adopted by an Indonesian, who then traveled on Indonesian passports, who was treated for schizophrenia, who smoked crack, snorted cocaine, whose best friends (only friends) are domestic terrorists, who seems to be a marxist who gave a million bucks to a church-burning Muslim radical in Kenya, and who is a friend of Tony Rezko, as my President and Commander in chief.

[Calpernia]

>>>Now, add to these inconvenient facts the fact that his name was “Barry Soetoro” at the beginning of the adventure, and “Barack Hussein Obama” when he was mysteriously admitted to Harvard Law.

::adding to the woodpile::

If this is true, then he lied on his bar application when he checked off no prior aliases.

Which means, there is no legal name change.

Which means, he is not ‘legally’ “Barack Hussein Obama”.

Therefore, no one is running for President by the name of “Barack Hussein Obama”. He doesn’t legally exist :))

;)

[Calpernia]

There was a thread, within the past 2 days, that was an endorsement for Barack Obama when he ran for Senate by the Chicago DSA. They had him listed as a community organizer in Harlem. So he did probably live there.

[LucyT]

Thanks, Kenny Bunk and PhilDragoo.

Ping to article; check out #24.

[Calpernia]

>>>whose best friends (only friends) are domestic terrorists

Rezko is Syrian, Auchi is Iraqi, Weathermen were foreign funded.

Oops, we have an enemy combatant here!

[Fred Nerks]

Full Licensed
Name:
Barack Hussein Obama
Full Former
name(s):
None

http://www.politifact.com/media/files/obamaattyreg.pdf

[Fred Nerks]

“”My name is Sekou Mgobogi Abdullah Odinga. I am a Muslim and a POW. I was born in Queens, N.Y., on June 17, 1944...”

http://www.prisonactivist.org/archive/pps+pows/sekou-odinga/index.html

[Calpernia]

Which means, he knew there would not be a paper trail attached to him with an alias.

[1COUNTER-MORTER-68]

LOL,,,I think we were posting about where O’Bammy was when

that robbery took place a few weeks ago...

[Calpernia]

Sekou Odinga RAILA ODINGA

They look like they could be the same age, no?

[BIGLOOK]

"In 1970, I was asked to go to Algeria to help set up the International section of the BPP. After the split in the Party, caused by the COINTELPRO program, I decided to come back to the U.S. to continue the struggle. I continued to work until my capture in October of 1981. I was charged with six counts of attempted murder of police, for shooting over my shoulder while being chased and shot at by police. I was also charged with nine predicate acts of a RICO indictment. I was convicted of the attempted murders and given twenty-five years-to-life for it. I was convicted of two counts of the RICO indictment (the liberation of Assata Shakur and expropriation of an armored truck) and given twenty years and $25,000 fine for each RICO charge. All sentences run consecutively. "

Reads like a resume for Deputy Assistant Director of Homeland Security or a federal judge appointment in the Obama administration. This guy knows the law Outside in.

[justiceseeker93]

Did you notice the similarity between the two pieces of data on Obama’s standard resume? Both his birth in Honolulu and his attendance at Columbia are doubtful. Which makes one wonder what else in that resume is also phony.

[Calpernia]

Algeria must have been significant in the early 70s.

He is pictured here:

http://www.uaacc.habari.co.tz/black_panther_party_in_kansas_ci.htm

Pete and brothers in Algeria including BPP Field Marshall DC; Sekou Odinga; Cetawayo Tabor and Mzee Shakur

Now, look at the picture to the left on that same page.

Pete and Charlotte, in 1971, with one day old son Malcolm, at BPP International Section

That baby's name is Malcolm and he looks white?

Interesting.

[Calpernia]

These pics and link is the history of the Black Panther Party for Kansas City in 1968.

The mystery Odinga from the Brinks robbery is here.

Some whitish looking baby too, one day old in Africa.