President barack obama’s love of secrecy has, by this point, become a favorite rhetorical cudgel for the president’s opponents. And perhaps no set of documents is more coveted due to its total unavailability than the president’s college records. Those only became public after a leak from inside yale university, not due to any consent on the part of the former president. All the same, obama’s time at columbia is filled with gaps, such as the question of whether his classmates really knew him.

At times, it is enough to make you wonder just what we do know about president obama’s college years, hence the rush to speculate among those who oppose the president. Below are five facts regarding obama’s college years at columbia, that are a starting point for the discussion. Barack obama did attend columbia university this one is pretty much beyond dispute. Two of obama’s former roommates, sohale siddiqi and phil boerner the latter of whom was also an occidental transfer substantiate it, along with one of obama’s former professors, michael l.

Politifact also uncovered and spoke to another alumna of columbia who remembered obama: cathie currie, who currently teaches social psychology at adelphi university, recalled obama joining her group occasionally to play pick up soccer games on the lawn outside the library. He was a good soccer player, she said, even though basketball was his primary athletic passion. In fact, currie assumed because of obama’s heady conversation that he was a graduate student as well. Currie isn’t surprised that he was not widely remembered by fellow columbia classmates. He seemed like someone who had made a decision to prioritize his studies, she said. He seemed like he wanted to, but then he’d step back and say, ‘sorry, i’m going to the library.’ finally, one of the few pieces of obama’s writing we have found from that period is an article in the columbia sundial.

If obama was not attending the school, it is very unlikely that he would have bothered reading its publications, much less write an article for one of them. Barack obama moved addresses while at columbia two addresses are listed for obama during his time in new york, one of which he shared with his aforementioned roommate phil boerner. The apartment obama shared with boerner is listed as apartment 3e, located at 142 west 109th st, in new york. Obama's first apartment building today the new york times reported that obama gave up this particular address due to lack of heat. Boerner explains in an essay for columbia’s alumni magazine: barack has said that he spent a lot of time in the library while at columbia and one reason for this was that our apartment had irregular heat, and we didn’t enjoy hanging out there once the weather got cold.

The radiators in our apartment were either stone cold, or, less often, blasted out such intense heat that we had to open the windows and let in freezing air just to cool things down. When the heat wasn’t on, we sometimes sat with sleeping bags or blankets wrapped around ourselves and read our school books. We also didn’t have regular hot water and sometimes used the columbia gym for showers. He later moved to apartment 6a at 339 east 94th st, where he spent his senior year, according to the times, which also noted that telephone directories from the early 1980s listed b. This address also features in obama’s memoir in which he writes about chatting with his puerto rican neighbors about the knicks or gunshots they had heard in the neighborhood. Obama’s classmates didn’t see him as the type to become president obama’s behavior at college wasn’t exactly what one would expect from a future president of the united states.two different acquaintances of obama’s speak to his introverted, eccentric and sensitive character – a far cry from the sort of gregarious bombast one expects from presidential candidates.

First, from phil boerner’s essay on obama: barack wasn’t thinking about becoming president when he was in college he wanted to be a writer. Barack is a good man some might even call him a saint for tolerating my beginning banjo playing. Based on my six years of knowing him in college and the years immediately after, i can vouch that barack is a man of character, and i trust him to do the right things when he is president.

He speaks bluntly: the thought, believe me, never crossed my mind that he would be our first black president. But presidential material? perhaps tellingly, few if any saw the white house in his cards. Obama was a strong supporter of nuclear disarmament remember michael baron, the columbia professor who remembers obama and corroborates his time at columbia? well, prof.

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Baron seems to remember more than just president obama’s presence in his courses. Apparently, the future president was quite the foreign policy buff and earned a solid a from baron. Moreover, obama is alleged to have written a lengthy thesis paper under baron’s supervision – a thesis which is itself the subject of speculation, since there is no copy of it on file. Indeed, baron has apparently been frantically searching his own personal files trying to find a copy. Which, when combined with over evidence, tells us quite a bit about college age obama’s particular academic interests and beliefs: his former professor, michael baron, recalled in an interview with nbc news that obama easily aced the year long class. Baron described the paper as a thesis or senior thesis in several interviews, and said that obama spent a year working on it.

My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the soviet union and the united states, baron said in an e mail. At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country could safely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … for u.s. Policy makers in both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the soviet nuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent american advantage. As i remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success.

Baron said that, even if he could find a copy of the paper, it would likely disappoint obama’s critics. The course was not a polemical course, it was a course in decision making and how decisions got made, he said. Fortunately for baron, a more polemic and controversial piece of writing by president obama does survive – namely, the aforementioned article he wrote in the columbia sundial magazine. Human events summarized the article fairly accurately this way: obama deems the reagan era defense buildup a distorted priority and dead end track. Writing in the midst of the cold war, obama was nevertheless oblivious to the threat the soviet union then posed to the united states. Instead, obama blames you guessed it america and its twisted world view for the growing threat of war. If only americans would change their thinking, he argues, the threat would subside.

Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled into our minds through television film, and print. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experiences down into our hearts and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task. Two groups on campus, arms race alternatives ara and students against militarism sam work within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action necessary to counter the growing threat of war. Though the emphasis of the two groups differ, they share an aversion to current government policy. These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting america off the dead end track.

For obama, the only thing wrong with the nuclear freeze movement is that it’s not ambitious enough. One is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself. Based on this description, it’s fair to conclude that obama was a supporter of nuclear disarmament and a critic of the reagan era defense buildup. Indeed, obama sounds almost like a 60′s draft dodger in places of the piece, comparing student groups that are opposed to selective service registration to antiwar thinkers like henry david thoreau, thomas jefferson and walt whitman.

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Grandiose stuff, and also consistent with the president’s love of high flown rhetoric. Obama attended at least one socialist conference while at columbia the evidence for this one comes straight from the horse’s mouth – namely, obama himself. This is a quite candid admission by obama, not least of all because it doesn’t appear to be him stretching the truth at all, unlike with other passages in his memoir.