Columbia College does not require a thesis for any senior, period. I hardly think Obama would spend hours and hours writing a thesis if it were not required coursework. We can blame this whole flap on the incompetence of the NY Times in misreporting it.
Whatever you call the damn thing, he mostly likely DID write some kind of paper on Soviet nuclear disarmament. Plus, we have this KGB-front, Institute For Policy Studies, leading a "nuclear disarmament" movement out of nearby Riverside Church at precisely the same time Obama was at Columbia. We have Bill Ayers attending nearby Bank Street College, also at the same time. We have FBI confirmation that the Weather Underground were taught Marxist philosophy and "urban warfare" by the KGB while in Cuba. It is by no means a stretch to conclude that this idiot from Hawaii, or wherever, held/holds this position. I would bet my life on it that he was somehow mixed up in the Riverside Church/KGB-front thing. He might not have been aware what it was, but I think it's highly likely that he was influenced by individuals there. He's already admitted he attended several Socialist Scholars Conferences at the time. These things are crawling with pro-communist/pro-Russia PsOS.
From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: Institute For Policy Studies (IPS)
IPS’s [Institute For Policy Studies] Washington, DC headquarters quickly became a resource center for national reporters and a place for KGB agents from the nearby Soviet embassy to convene and strategize. Cora Weiss headed one of the IPS's most successful forays -- into Riverside Church in Manhattan. She was invited there in 1978 by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin to run the church's Disarmament Program, which sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe -- in the name of "peace." In 1982 Weiss helped organize the largest pro-disarmament demonstration ever held. Staged in New York City, the rally was attended by a coalition of communist organizations. During her decade-long tenure at Riverside, which became home to the National Council of Churches, Weiss regularly received Russian KGB agents, Sandinista friends, and Cuban intelligence agents. Weiss became infamous for her role in the psychological warfare conducted against U.S. prisoners of war held in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War.
The Liberation News Service, which is a news source for hundreds of "alternative" publications nationwide (with antiwar, Marxist-oriented perspectives), was founded in 1967 with IPS assistance."
[lots more at link...]
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6991
“Columbia College does not require a thesis for any senior, period. I hardly think Obama would spend hours and hours writing a thesis if it were not required coursework.”
You missed my point. Even when a senior honors thesis is not required, students pursue them for the HONORS conferred upon them at graduation. Here’s the description from Department of Political Science:
“The department offers an honors program for a limited number of seniors who want to undertake substantial research projects and write honors theses. The honors thesis is expected to be approximately 60–75 pages in length and of exceptional quality. Honors students perform research as part of a full-year honors seminar (POLS C3998-C3999 , 8 points total) during their senior year, in place of the seminar requirement for majors. Honors students may, however, take regular seminars to fulfill other course requirements for the major. Theses are due in late March or early April. To be awarded departmental honors, the student must satisfy all the requirements for the major, maintain a 3.6 GPA in the major, and complete a thesis of sufficiently high quality to merit honors.”
http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/depts/polisci.php
A student with Obama’s ambition would be quite LIKELY to pursue honors. Thus, the fact that a senior thesis was not REQUIRED is a very thin reed on which to base the conclusion that he never wrote one.