Posted on 06/18/2013 12:08:27 AM PDT by ransomnote
In a recent interview, a well-known professor who taught at Columbia University for 46 years questioned whether or not President Obama actually attended the Ivy League school.
Prominent Columbia professor Henry Graff says he isn't sure President Obama ever attended the Ivy League school.
“I taught every significant politician that ever studied at Columbia,” said Columbia Emeritus Professor of History Henry Graff, in an interview last week with Wayne Root, a contributor at The Blaze. “Between American History and Diplomatic History, one way or another, they all had to come through my classes.”
“Not Obama,” he continued. “I never had a student with that name in any of my classes. I never met him, never saw him, never heard of him.”
Graff alleged that “none of the other Columbia professors knew him either” and said he is “very upset” to hear Obama referred to as a graduate of Columbia University.
“I am angry when I hear Obama called ‘the first President of the United States from Columbia University,’” he said. “I don’t consider him a Columbia student. I have no idea what he did on the Columbia campus. No one knows him.”
Graff is the recipient of the Kaul Foundation Award of Excellence in the field of education, an honor that is tied to a prize of $100,000. He is the author of multiple books and is known for teaching the first course on the history of the Presidency.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @oliverda
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreform.org ...
Importance: If Obama stayed in California that whole summer of 1980, then there was no way for him to fill out his Selective Service form on July 29, 1980 in Hawaii. Somebody else did it.
A forgery. If Obama knew that someone else filled out the form, then that is fraud and Obama is a liar, and he should be impeached.
How did I come to my conclusion that Obama stayed in California? I studied an article written in 2009 about Obama’s friends at Occidental in California his freshman year.
A poster here recently suggested that we read it. (NOTE: According to google, Red Steel at Free Republic quoted the entire article on May 15, 2008.)
I will not quote the whole article here.
I will quote those parts that show that Obama’s 1980 Selective Service form that we see on the internet is a forgery and those parts that show that Obama was in California the entire summer of 1980.
cbs AP/ June 18, 2009, 6:26 PM
Recalling Obama’s Younger Days
“Obama in the eyes of some right wingers is basically Muslim until proved innocent,” says Margot Mifflin, a friend from Occidental who is now a journalism professor at New York's Lehman College. “It's partly the Muslim factor by association and partly the fear of something being twisted.” The young man Mifflin remembers was “an unpretentious, down to earth, solidly middle-class guy who seemed somewhat more sophisticated than the average college student. He was slightly reserved and deliberate in a way that I sometimes thought betrayed an uncertainty.”
But another former Oxy classmate, Robert McCrary, now general manager of a contract sewing company, saw him differently: “He definitely had a cocky, sometimes arrogant way about him. ... He was not open to others.” Of course, he was only 18 when he arrived at the small liberal arts college nicknamed “Oxy.”
His freshman roommates were Imad Husain, a Pakistani, who's now a Boston banker, and Paul Carpenter, now a Los Angeles lawyer. Carpenter recalled Obama as “a good bodysurfer” who had “a funky red car, a Fiat,” and who also played intramurals &- flag football, tennis and water polo. “He was an athletic guy. He was gifted in that regard,” said Carpenter. He also remembered Obama being “super bright. He could get through the course work in a fraction of the time it took me.”
Obama had an international circle of friends - “a real eclectic sort of group,” says Vinai Thummalapally, who himself came from Hyderabad, India.
As a freshman, he quickly became friends with Mohammed Hasan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, two wealthy Pakistanis.
There were others, Thummalapally recalls: a French student and both black and white Americans, including Jon K. Mitchell, who later played bass for country-swing band Asleep at the Wheel (Mitchell remembers that Obama wore puka shell necklaces all the time, though they were not in style, and that “we let it slide because he spent a lot of time growing up in Hawaii.”)
The friends got together often to watch basketball games - they were Lakers fans - and eat the southern Indian food that Thummalapally cooked with his cousin.
There was serious talk, too. Obama had concerns about U.S. foreign policy - including the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran under Jimmy Carter, and American support of the Contras in Latin America.
Thummalapally lived with Obama the summer of 1980. The two ran together daily, three miles in the early morning, often chatting about their dreams. Thummalapally wanted to start a business back home; Obama talked about helping people.
********
1. Obama drove a red Fiat at Occidental. This means that Obama had eiher an Hawaiian or California license in 1979-1980, unless he was driving around Southern California without a license during that period.
2. Importance of Obama driver license: The person who filled out Obama’s Selective Service form in Hawaii on July 29,1980 had no identification: No Social Security card. No driver's license. no Occidental id card. Strange.
3. “ Thummalapally lived with Obama the summer of 1980. The two ran together daily, three miles in the early morning, often chatting about their dreams. Thummalapally wanted to start a business back home; Obama talked about helping people.”
Thummalapally: Anyone know where he is today? He obviously knows if Obama visited Hawaii in the summer 1980, because he lived with Obama during the summer of 1980.
4. Lived together and ran together daily.....not in Hawaii, but IN CALIFORNIA!
5. No mention of Obama going back to Hawaii. Can't be much clearer than that: Obama was in California for the entire summer of 1980, so there was no way for him to have filled out his Selective Service form on July 29, 1980. Someone else must have done it for him.
What about girls in Southern California at that time?
I bet there are plenty women today who remember Obama being in Southern California during the summer of 1980, some of whom must have visited Obama at his apartment. Where are you? Be brave and tell us what you know.
What about local bars and restaurants? I bet obama and his friends visited some of them in Southern California during the summer of 1980.
If you remember Obama frequenting restaurants and bars in Southern California during the summer of 1980, let us know. Speak up as a brave citizen of the United States who wants to do what is right.
6. What I also found impressive about the article was this: The wealth of names from Obama'sOccidental days who would know how Obama spent his summer of 1980, especially when there is no record of Obama holding a job from his first day at Occidental until he graduated from Columbia 4 years later.
Are we to blindly and naively accept the idea that Obama supported himself during his 4 years in college simply with college loan money and some mysterious scholarships, scholarships that no one can find anything about? Give me a break.
Don't we have ugly names for young people who live off friends and relatives and do not try to find a job for years and years? Are the ugly names printable here?
7. The names of Obama friends from Occidental in the article are below.
Investigators and reporters should put pressure on these people to tell us where Obama was during that summer of 1980. These friends can't hide behind federal privacy laws like Obama can.
Paul Carpenter, freshman roommate,Los Angeles Lawyer
Mohammed Hasan Chandroo
Wahid Hamid
Imad Hussain, freshman roommate, Boston banker
Robert McCrary
Margot Miffin, professor, Lehman college, New York
Jon R. Mitchell, later country band member
Andrew Roth
Vinai Thummalapally from Hyderabad, India; lived with Obama during summer of 1980
8. Hawaii summer 1980: If none of the people above can put Obama in Hawaii on July 29, 1980 when his Selective Service form was filled out, then Obama is a fraud and a liar and needs to be impeached.
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One would certainly think so, but absence of such evidence would not conclusively prove he wasn’t a Columbia student or graduate. I never had a picture in the university yearbook (this was considered a “Greeks and conformists” thing at the time). People who graduate at other times than Spring often miss the formal commencement exercise. You would still think the college publishes lists of its graduates, and that copies exist somewhere. Why haven’t Obama partisans put the evidence on the table years ago?
Even the leftist snopes came up with very little: two roommates and a grad student who taught (surprise) an “honors seminar” and one mention in a school magazine. That’s it.
We know is he was around the area for part of that time, and that he was given credit for attending Columbia. But who supported him and paid for school? Where’s the evidence he did actual coursework?
Compare that to what we knew about the details of Bush’ life, or of Bill Clinton’s, or of any potential Republican candidate for president.
Hell, even junior bush showed up for cheerleading practice when he wasn’t drunk or hungover. I find it strange the obama didn’t do hardly anything in college that was memorable.
Additionally there is the article that Obama wrote for the March 10, 1983 edition of the Columbia Sundial student newspaper entitled “Breaking the War Mentality,” and Michael Wolf, President of the MTV television networks has confirmed that he was in a seminar at Columbia with Obama. The professor for that seminar, Dr. Michael L. Baron also has confirmed that Obama was in his class and that he wrote a letter of recommendation for Obama to Harvard Law School.
Obama’s name and addresses appear in the 1982 & 1983 Columbia student directories.
Obama’s name appears in the 1983 Spring Graduation Day Program list of graduates that was posted on Breitbart.com. And Columbia University says that he is a 1983 graduate.
Finally David Maraniss’s new biography of Obama contains excerpts of letters and diary entries from Obama’s two girlfriends while he attended Columbia, Alexandra Mc Near and Genevieve Cook.
I included Baron, just not by name.
I can’t really believe stuff that was referenced long after the fact.
A guy takes a full course of classes at a prestigious school for two years and that’s the evidence?
My university experience was longer ago than O’s and I’m not famous and the university was huge, but I guarantee there’s a lot more memories and paper trail of me than there is of O.
My post was not meant to imply that was the entire extent of corroborating information, it was just some additional corroboration.
Something that the doubters about Obama at Columbia don’t seem to explain very well is how would someone get into the number one (at that time) law school in the nation, Harvard Law, without a four year degree? And then go on to graduate from the number one law school Magna cum Laude and President of Volume of the Harvard Law Review?
As for your question, I studied engineering and electronics. I looked at the job market and decided to pursue something useful since there were way too many grammar nazis looking for work.
Large contributions, just as has always been the case with ‘legacies’.
Columbia College must have it backwards too. See: http://www.college.columbia.edu/news/barack-obama-83-becomes-first-college-alumnus-to-win-presidency
It is interesting that the article claims Obama as an alumnus, with no mention of a degree.
I can’t recall what was used in 2004, but I noticed more recently that Obama-friendly media uses College rather than University. I am not sure the distinction matters to most, but I was trying to suggest that researchers should cast a wide net if looking for lists, etc. My guess is that Obama did somewhat attend Columbia-something, and got away with incredible laxity courtesy of aggressive affirmative action. Seems doubtful that he earned a normal degree, whether anyone was blackmailed or not. The common belief that he could not have entered Harvard Law without one is not compelling.
When a person is a judgmental as you are, you should expect to be judged for your ability to express those pronouncements.
Honestly, Toots...judge all you want. You couldn’t dare me to care.
I’m a Columbia College graduate (1961)and can offer this info:
Columbia College is the primo undergraduate college of Columbia University which has many different schools, mostly grad schools. However, there is a School of General Studies which offers an undergraduate degree that is not from Columbia College.
The University school accepts transfers and all sorts of foreign students very freely. Columbia College does not normally accept transfers because:
a)this would be a way around the very high selection standards of this Ivy League school, and,
b) because the first two years of required courses of all Columbia College students make transferring very difficult as most transferees would have to virtually start over their education process and that would trip them up against item a)above.
While things may have changed somewhat, I doubt that Columbia College would have made a place for what appears to be a middling student from Occidental in the third year of education.
Professor Graff was my College advisor and if he says something, you can take it to the bank as collateral
I appreciate your clarifications, which make perfect sense. My original purpose was twofold:
1) to encourage those looking for Obama’s name on graduation rosters to check ALL lists for the various schools at Columbia University — not just the College; and,
2) to examine the claims in an article on a webpage clearly labelled as belonging to Columbia College, that proclaims Obama is an alumnus of Columbia College. It makes no reference to Columbia University. This appears to be an official Columbia College website. Is it? (Please see link in Post 52 above).
If someone graduated, or even just attended, a different school within the Columbia University system, but not Columbia College itself, would Columbia College consider that person as a Columbia College graduate or alumnus? Your remarks lead me to believe the answer is NO. (It seems plausible for Columbia College graduates to be considered alumni of the umbrella University, but not the other way around.) We might believe Obama did not graduate from Columbia College. Yet the article says what it says. How can this be?
I have no ideas except these:
1. Everybody loves a winner. It might be that the College decided to ‘adopt’ him after he became famous—but that is another reason not to release information and why no contemporaneous records can be found nor any other ‘classmate’ who remembers him.
2. Columbia used to have a policy about class attendance whereby you actually didn’t have to attend class beyond the allowed absences—IF you maintained a B- or better in the course. This is a remote possibility but it is a practice that I took advantage of so I know it well.
Because I was in NYC and something of a party boy and athlete, I wasn’t about to be constrained by crummy attendance rules. I sometimes scheduled two courses at the same hour and my attendance was spotty at best. However, I still managed to maintain my grades and graduate, but I was pretty well known (not to say notorious) at the school. So a complete absence from attendance with graduation is possible, if unlikely.
The Dean: I thought you had a degree from Columbia.
Jeff: Yes, and now I need to get one from America.
General Studies students can take courses that are offered in Columbia College with permission and if that course is necessary for their course of study but not offered in GS.
So it is possible that a GS student could have taken a College course and be remembered by that professor—but not be in the regular student body of Columbia College.
LOL
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