Obama’s College Classmate: ‘The Obama Scandal Is at Columbia’

[Dr Kynes]

FACULTY
Lennard Davis, Assistant Professor (Now Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago)

In the spring of 1983, I was Barack Obama's professor at Columbia University. Barack, or Barry as he was known then, was a senior in my class on "The Novel and Ideology." I understand from reliable sources that he liked the class and was intrigued by what I was teaching.
​

Michael L. Baron, Professor of Political Science

One person who did remember Mr. Obama was Michael L. Baron, who taught a senior seminar on international politics and American policy. Mr. Baron, now president of an electronics company in Florida, said he was Mr. Obama’s adviser on the senior thesis for that course. Mr. Baron, who later wrote Mr. Obama a recommendation for Harvard Law School, gave him an A in the course.
Columbia was a hotbed for discussion of foreign policy, Mr. Baron said. The faculty included Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser, and Zalmay Khalilzad, now the American ambassador to the United Nations. Half of the eight students in the seminar were outstanding, and Mr. Obama was among them, Mr. Baron said.
In 1983, as a senior at Columbia in New York, Barack Obama enrolled in an intense, eight-student honors seminar called American Foreign Policy. His former professor, Michael Baron, recalled in an interview with NBC News that Obama easily aced the year-long class. But Baron says he never had any inkling that the gangly senior would scale such heights.
“You wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, he’s going to be secretary of state or president someday’,” Baron said. Obama was whip smart and “clearly one of the top one or two students in the class,” he said, but Obama’s seven classmates also could hold their own. “No real dolts in the class,” Baron remembered.
Twenty-five years later, Baron is president of a digital-media company in Florida and has hung up his professorial tweeds for good. He had saved Obama’s senior paper for years, and even hunted for it again this month in some boxes. But he said his search was fruitless, and he now thinks he tossed it out eight years ago during a move.
Baron described the paper as a “thesis” or “senior thesis” in several interviews, and said that Obama spent a year working on it. Baron recalls that the topic was nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.
“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. Barack got an A.”
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. “None of the papers in the class were controversial.”
So would it provide any political ammunition today? “I don’t think it would at all,” Baron said. “It wasn’t a position paper; it was an analysis of decision-making.”
Baron acknowledges that he’s a big Obama supporter. He wrote a letter of recommendation for his former student when Obama applied to Harvard Law School. And, Federal Election Commission records show, the former professor has donated $1,250 to Obama’s presidential campaign.
“People assume he’s a novice,” said Michael L. Baron, who taught Mr. Obama in a Columbia seminar on international politics and American policy around the time he wrote the Sundial article. “He’s been thinking about these issues for a long time. It’s not like one of his advisers said, ‘Why don’t you throw this out?’ ”
In a paper for Dr. Baron, Mr. Obama analyzed how a president might go about negotiating nuclear arms reductions with the Russians — exactly what he is seeking to do this week.
​

apparently i must spread some reputation around before adding to cheesus's again.

thjis is the kind of shit i like to see,, bold statements boldly refuted. nice work cheesus,, but i still wont be voting barry obama in november.

 

[ginwilly]

they boo and hiss at anyone who brings up the point that no president should have that sort of power. I had a discussion with a group of right persons who insisted that the constitution intended for there to be a 4 year monarchy. Of course they changed their mind when Bush left office

we are repeating history in this team sport.

Those people you were talking to are a huge part of the problem, we were designed to prevent a monarchy. Having said that, being right today is far more important than being consistent with what you said 10 years ago. Hopefully your friends have had a change of heart when they see the other team doing what they defended.

 

[Dr Kynes]

You bring up a fine point.


I don't like to call my rebuttals or data or links "proof". I believe that unless the opposition accepts the data, an argument can never be proven. Chesus taking from the left does not mean that it is wrong. The left and the right can report fact. It is only the opinion portions that aren't really useable - lots of conservatives don't seem to get that.


Therefore if I cut and paste a conversation from one of the principles of an issue - say the entirety of an Obama speech, then it doesn't matter if it comes from FOX or MSNBC does it? so long as the speech is not altered or taken out of context. And if it is, that can easily be pointed out.

So why is there a problem using the Daily Kos or Huffpo? I resent this continuing notion from the right that they have the ultimate say over which news sources are valid and which are not. We see that over and over again, when the right agrees with a source that it claims is lying, then and only then is that source deemed legitimate. You folks don't get that that sort of thing seriously weakens all of your arguments.

Deal with the content and not with the source.

you would do well to remember that post the next time you deride fox news for being biased based on your opinion of their opinion. bias lives on all sides, if you declare fox illegitimate for specific line items that you consider lies,, then i can eliminate the new york times,, nbc cbs abc cnn msnbc bloomberg rueters associated press the bbc skynews aljezeera pravda and pretty much any news agency in the world based on the same criteria.

 

[beenthere]

Therefore if I cut and paste a conversation from one of the principles of an issue - say the entirety of an Obama speech, then it doesn't matter if it comes from FOX or MSNBC does it? so long as the speech is not altered or taken out of context. And if it is, that can easily be pointed out. Agreed.

So why is there a problem using the Daily Kos or Huffpo? I resent this continuing notion from the right that they have the ultimate say over which news sources are valid and which are not. We see that over and over again, when the right agrees with a source that it claims is lying, then and only then is that source deemed legitimate. You folks don't get that that sort of thing seriously weakens all of your arguments.

Deal with the content and not with the source.

You mean like the left and Faux News?

 

[bedspirit]

I don't see this major point being made. The real questions are, his grades and was he admitted as a foreign student to either Occidental or Columbia College, neither of which were addressed in all the copy and paste testimonials.

And I disagree that poor or mediocre grades would be inconsequential, it would certainly make it hard to explain how he was excepted into Harvard Law with a gpa of less than 3.6.

Funny how the left and MSM had a field day with George Bush's GPA at Yale, but somehow Obama's grades are not that important!

You're right, the main stream media did make a big deal out of Bush's grades. But, Bush still won. You know why? Cause no one gives a fuck. What's the implication if he got into Harvard with bad grades? Is that a scandal somehow? Do you think he bribed his way in?

Look, I get no pleasure out of defending Obama, but bad grades at a friggin Ivy League school will have no impact on the election. It's petty partisan horseshit and only political junkies will care. Now if he pretended to be foreign to get into Columbia, that's something else.

 

[beenthere]

You're right, the main stream media did make a big deal out of Bush's grades. But, Bush still won. You know why? Cause no one gives a fuck. What's the implication if he got into Harvard with bad grades? Is that a scandal somehow? Do you think he bribed his way in?

Look, I get no pleasure out of defending Obama, but bad grades at a friggin Ivy League school will have no impact on the election. It's petty partisan horseshit and only political junkies will care. Now if he pretended to be foreign to get into Columbia, that's something else.

I respect your opinion but mine differs and I for one do give a fuck.
While you're correct Bush still won with a C average from Yale, he never ran on or was ever lauded as the astute intellect Obama is.
I can honestly say, I see more relevance in a presidents education than I do the money he made in the private sector. The again, I'd just as soon they both release what we are asking for and be done with it.

 

[bedspirit]

I respect your opinion but mine differs and I for one do give a fuck.
While you're correct Bush still won with a C average from Yale, he never ran on or was ever lauded as the astute intellect Obama is.
I can honestly say, I see more relevance in a presidents education than I do the money he made in the private sector. The again, I'd just as soon they both release what we are asking for and be done with it.

We can agree on that. I want to see all the skeletons from their closets.

 

[NLXSK1]

You're right, the main stream media did make a big deal out of Bush's grades. But, Bush still won. You know why? Cause no one gives a fuck. What's the implication if he got into Harvard with bad grades? Is that a scandal somehow? Do you think he bribed his way in?

Look, I get no pleasure out of defending Obama, but bad grades at a friggin Ivy League school will have no impact on the election. It's petty partisan horseshit and only political junkies will care. Now if he pretended to be foreign to get into Columbia, that's something else.

The problem is that you dont get into schools like that without good grades or maybe lying on your application and saying you were a foreign exchange student.

Where did all the money come from to pay for Obama's ivy league education? Was it student loans? Was it grants? Dont we deserve to know?

People want to crawl up Romney's asshole with an IRS agent yet dont seem to give a flying fuck about a seriously glaring contradiction in Obama's educational access and performance.

 

[bedspirit]

The problem is that you dont get into schools like that without good grades or maybe lying on your application and saying you were a foreign exchange student.

Where did all the money come from to pay for Obama's ivy league education? Was it student loans? Was it grants? Dont we deserve to know?

People want to crawl up Romney's asshole with an IRS agent yet dont seem to give a flying fuck about a seriously glaring contradiction in Obama's educational access and performance.

If the reasons for those things are as awesome as some of the conspiracy theories, then, yeah, I'd love to know. I suspect the truth is probably much more boring. Demanding to know everything a presidential candidate has done since he was 19 years old seems a bit much.

I don't think they would find anything illegal in Romney's tax returns, but I know they would show how clever he is at tax avoidance. I am personally not a fan of such loopholes in the law and if we could find someone who was willing to level the playing field and close some of those loopholes, I'd vote for him. Given that Romney owes some of his wealth to those tricks, he is clearly not that guy. Obama talks a good game, but as far as I know, he hasn't done much to close those loopholes. Instead he talks about raising taxes on people who are very good at avoiding them.

 

[Mr Neutron]

We're pretty tolerant of dumb in this country.

..........

 

[OGEvilgenius]

After Bush got elected he shelved under lock and key all of his governor of Texas records. He also by presidential order sealed 20 years of every president's records including his fathers. He made presidential documents next to impossible to get a hold of unless the person specificaly released said documents, but you had to know beforehand what the document you wanted was - no "fishing".

Yet I never see anyone on the right ever having complained about the huge extent of Bush's "cover up".

He covered up for more than just fellow Republicans. Something tells me you'd never accept this fact though.

 

[canndo]

you would do well to remember that post the next time you deride fox news for being biased based on your opinion of their opinion. bias lives on all sides, if you declare fox illegitimate for specific line items that you consider lies,, then i can eliminate the new york times,, nbc cbs abc cnn msnbc bloomberg rueters associated press the bbc skynews aljezeera pravda and pretty much any news agency in the world based on the same criteria.

Sorry Doc, there is no comparison between FOX and any other news service, it is more than a question of bias. Tell me, can you name another news source that activily campaigns for a particular party or actively solicits donations for a particular PAC? Hmmm? In fact I recall MSNBC suspeded Olbermann for contributing to some political side, let alone let anyone solicit. No Doc, you and some of the others like the feeling of balance and symetry you get from pronouncing that both sides are the same and one side is absolutely no better or worse than the other. I makes us all feel more comfortable when we can assess sides like that.


But it isn't true.

 

[canndo]

He covered up for more than just fellow Republicans. Something tells me you'd never accept this fact though.

If you read my post, I said EVERY president, that would include non-republicans.

 

[Dr Kynes]

Sorry Doc, there is no comparison between FOX and any other news service, it is more than a question of bias. Tell me, can you name another news source that activily campaigns for a particular party or actively solicits donations for a particular PAC? Hmmm? In fact I recall MSNBC suspeded Olbermann for contributing to some political side, let alone let anyone solicit. No Doc, you and some of the others like the feeling of balance and symetry you get from pronouncing that both sides are the same and one side is absolutely no better or worse than the other. I makes us all feel more comfortable when we can assess sides like that.


But it isn't true.

GE owns NBC and MSNBC. who is obamas top advisor on the economy? right. only fox has an agenda. everybody else is just biased.

this is why when democrats succeed in portraying mitt romney as mister monopoly with a crazy cult background and a tax cheat they are "doing a great job of positioning themselves and their opponent!" but when the republicans portray obama as a tax and spend liberal and a socialist they are racist.

pull your head up out of that hjole and youll see that ed schultz and bill orielly are the same guy in different wigs.

fox reportage may not jive with your understanding of the world, but they get it right more often than not in my neck of the woods.

i believe it was evil sinful fox that said the moslem brotherhood would be running egypt after the "arab spring" while everybody else in the world press thought it was gonna be some imaginary fairy princess with peace in her heart and love for all god's children in her magic wand... sound like fox knows better than rachel maddow tingles or ted turner what is goin down in the shit.

 

[BA142]

GE owns NBC and MSNBC. who is obamas top advisor on the economy? right. only fox has an agenda. everybody else is just biased.

this is why when democrats succeed in portraying mitt romney as mister monopoly with a crazy cult background and a tax cheat they are "doing a great job of positioning themselves and their opponent!" but when the republicans portray obama as a tax and spend liberal and a socialist they are racist.

pull your head up out of that hjole and youll see that ed schultz and bill orielly are the same guy in different wigs.

fox reportage may not jive with your understanding of the world, but they get it right more often than not in my neck of the woods.

i believe it was evil sinful fox that said the moslem brotherhood would be running egypt after the "arab spring" while everybody else in the world press thought it was gonna be some imaginary fairy princess with peace in her heart and love for all god's children in her magic wand... sound like fox knows better than rachel maddow tingles or ted turner what is goin down in the shit.

Mitt Romney is in a cult.....but I just consider any Religion a cult (since it is by definition ....)

It's not just Faux, they're all biased partisan hacks.

 

[Dr Kynes]

Mitt Romney is in a cult.....but I just consider any Religion a cult (since it is by definition ....)

It's not just Faux, they're all biased partisan hacks.

here now, dont go defaming cults with mormonism, im in a cult right now,, and we dont have to wear magic underpants nor nothin.

i spent about 6 years of my youth trapped in mormonism, and they really arent as wacky as they are portrayed. they are pretty much just good people who firmly believe that indians were descendents of lott, who built submarines to sail to the US before turning savage and getting the Mark Of Cain version 2.3 (not quite as black as africans in Mark Of Cain 1.0, but not yellowish like Mark Of Cain 2.0, more of a deep reddish broze that suits most decors.) who will one day become plygamous gods on their own personal worlds....

its all very Stargate S.G. 1

and it still makes more sense than islam or scientology.

 

[cannabineer]

here now, dont go defaming cults with mormonism, im in a cult right now,, and we dont have to wear magic underpants nor nothin.

i spent about 6 years of my youth trapped in mormonism, and they really arent as wacky as they are portrayed. they are pretty much just good people who firmly believe that indians were descendents of lott, who built submarines to sail to the US before turning savage and getting the Mark Of Cain version 2.3 (not quite as black as africans in Mark Of Cain 1.0, but not yellowish like Mark Of Cain 2.0, more of a deep reddish broze that suits most decors.) who will one day become plygamous gods on their own personal worlds....

its all very Stargate S.G. 1

and it still makes more sense than islam or scientology.

Snooki on too much cough syrup makes more sense than Scientology. cn

 

[UncleBuck]

The problem is that you dont get into schools like that without good grades or maybe lying on your application and saying you were a foreign exchange student.

admissions are not based on grades alone, smarty. admissions officers look at a variety of things, including how well rounded the student is and how good of a fit the student will be for the school.

but go on with your subtly racist rhetoric.

 

[Canna Sylvan]

Dukey,

It still cracks me up you took the bait. I was high and thought it was funny. But I had no idea. Did you find out Obama's poo poo break schedule too?

 

[Canna Sylvan]

admissions are not based on grades alone, smarty. admissions officers look at a variety of things, including how well rounded the student is and how good of a fit the student will be for the school.

but go on with your subtly racist rhetoric.

Yeah, like cultural diversity. A black Indonesian student looks good when begging money from rich liberal alumni!