Replies

He was in the same major as Ayers. He would of been thinking of post graduate education, at other schools and Columbia. Ayers was getting his Doctorate. It is common for Doctorate candidates to teach underclassmen.

Obama studied political science. Ayers had a degree in American studies and was going for an advanced degree in education.

Obama was at Columbia College. Ayers was at the Bank Street College of Education. It's in the same area as Columbia, but not part of the university.

Obama and Ayers could have known each other then, but it wouldn't have been as easy or as likely as you suggest.

Yes. If they did meet, we would have to search. Ayers, for the first time in his life, even when he was on the lam, is quiet.

Obama lived off campus.

.................................

various sources.

Obama transferred to CC from Occidental College which (poor place) is even more rarely mentioned by the young senator. At Occidental, Obama had been into partying and drugs. He hoped the move to New York, and Columbia, would put him on a more serious track.

Columbia at that time did not guarantee university housing for all students, so Obama lived off campus. He claims to have spent his first night sleeping in an alley near the corner of 109th and Amsterdam Avenue and washing with the homeless next to an open fire hydrant. He eventually moved into a walkup on E. 94th St., in East Harlem, where he would "chat with his Puerto Rican neighbors about...the sound of gunfire at night".[2]

When he was on campus, he concentrated on academic work, spending most of his time in Butler Library "like a monk", and made few friends. He also took up jogging and "stopped getting high". The racist and anti-Semitic graffiti he sometimes encountered on bathroom walls on campus (how times never change!) helped him form his ideas about race and class. He wrote of "the almost mathematical precision with which America’s race and class problems joined; the depth, the ferocity, of resulting tribal wars; the bile that flowed freely not just out on the streets but in the stalls of Columbia’s bathrooms as well".[3]

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

"An article in a Columbia University publication, Columbia College Today, reported that Mr. Obama has portrayed Columbia as a period of buckling down following a troubled adolescence. He did not socialize much, he has said, instead spending a lot of time in the library, "like a monk." He has also stated that he was involved to some extent with the Black Students Organization.

Federal law limits the information that Columbia can release about Mr. Obama's time there. A spokesman for the university, Brian Connolly, confirmed that Mr. Obama spent two years at Columbia College and graduated in 1983 with a major in political science. He did not receive honors, Mr. Connolly said, though specific information on his grades is sealed. A program from the 1983 graduation ceremony lists him as a graduate."

"Once he settled into an off-campus apartment, Obama hit the books, majoring in political science with a concentration in international relations. He wrote his senior thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament.

But besides these few facts, gleaned from the scant references in his autobiography Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, little else is known about his time at Columbia.

In his book, Obama recalls, “I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk.” Nowhere in his book is any reference made to friends, apart from his unnamed roommate, and he skips quickly over this period of his life.

There have been numerous failed attempts by reporters, administrators, and the Columbia University College Democrats to get Obama to speak about his time at the University or to come for a visit since 2006. Former College Democrats President Seth Flaxman slipped a letter to the Senator at a meet-and-greet, and current president Joshua Lipsky attempted to personally lure Obama back to campus at the College Democrats of America Convention last July. According to Lipsky, Senator Obama responded, “Sure, I’d love to do it.” But as of yet, he has not followed up on the promise."

“Obama and Ayers could have known each other then, but it wouldn’t have been as easy or as likely as you suggest.”

How likely though that they would both just happen to wind up living in the same neighborhood in Chicago? To me it’s looking increasingly clear that at some point early on Ayers came into contact with Obama and quickly realized his enormous potential. He then decided to help nurture Obama’s growth as a politician, shaping his image (ghostwriting his book) and even launching his career from his own home. All for kindhearted reasons, i’m sure. All for America’s best interests.

Obama: Ayers’ gift to America. The Trojan One. He’s standing outside the gates as we speak. Should we vote him in?

Amntn,

Great link!

From the comments,...

"And even this from Obama: "I spent a lot of time in the library". On yesterday's BHO post I saw from a search that Bank Street College Records were transferred to Columbia's Teacher College Library, in 1984, the year Ayers graduated from Bank Street. (That transfer might be some conspiracy fodder in itself somehow.)

So we know that education college Bank Street had a connection to the extensive education library of Columbia, which Ayers presumably would have used to research his masters. Strange that Obama mentioned being in the library there. Hmmm.

I think we've got it."

....................

Why Obama’s Columbia Years Went AWOL
What did Barack Obama do while at Columbia from 1981 to 1983 and in the year after his graduation? That part of his life is scarcely mentioned in “Dreams From My Father”; the Wall Street Journal remarked in the mystery a month ago and the NY Times puzzled over it a year ago.

Let me just toss out the outlines of a theory that has just hit my inbox and left me agog. First, the usual disclaimers - this is speculative, there are gaps and leaps of logic, and nothing can be proven. However, that said... well, see if you are agog as well.

1. From Dreams From My Father and other sources we know that Obama was interested in South Africa divestment in the early 80’s. For example, he had a moment of awakening at Occidental College when he gave a brief but well-received speech to kick off an anti-apartheid demonstration. Other sources indicate he maintained that interest while at Columbia.

2. A major focal point of the anti-apartheid movement in the fall of 1981 was the Springboks rugby tour - they were an integrated South African rugby team on a “goodwill” tour of the US, creating controversy and drawing protests everywhere. Some of the protests were violent, including one at John F. Kennedy Airport (from whence the team departed, I believe), and bombs were exploded.

3. Did I say “bombs”? Yes, and here is the jaw-dropping connection - the Weather Underground was involved in some fashion and the Brinks robbery which left two police officers and a security guard dead was apparently undertaken to finance activities such as the Springboks bombings. A flavor from the Times:

The police said they had several links between the robbery suspects and other people associated with radical activities in the past. Federal officials said they were looking into possible links between the holdup gang and the Black Liberation Army, which, like the Weather Underground of years ago, has been linked more recently to bombings, attacks on police officers and other violence aimed at toppling ‘’the establishment.’’ Getaway Car Recovered

A yellow Honda used as one of the getaway cars, for example, was recovered and found to have been registered to Eve S. Rosahn, who was a Barnard College student in the late 1960’s and was arrested in radical demonstrations at Columbia University then and more recently at a New York City airport demonstration against the Springboks, the South African rugby team.

These are just dots and it may be impossible to connect them, but we have Barack Obama at Columbia working on South African divestment (as were many peaceful protestors) while other radical elements with a Weather Underground flavor are setting bombs, killing cops, and working on South African divestment. As a bonus, Bill Ayers is studying at Bank Street College a quarter mile from Columbia towards his Masters in Education and Kathy Boudin, one of the Brinks getaway drivers, was working at a progressive Upper West Side School. Eventually Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised Kathy’s child while she was in jail, so it seems a fair guess that they were close.

A small, small world in which Obama never met any of these people despite their shared passion for justice in South Africa. Never heard them speak at a rally, never heard anyone describe the Weather Underground to him, and felt comfortable assuming that Bill Ayers had been rehabilitated by 1995. In fact, a world so small that Obama won’t talk about it now.