barack obama college essay

Barack Obama's Columbia University Thesis

Did barack obama's thesis for columbia university, entitled 'aristocracy reborn,' note that america's founding fathers 'did not allow for economic freedom', david mikkelson, published oct. 25, 2009.

Claim:   Barack Obama's thesis for Columbia University, entitled "Aristocracy Reborn," noted that America's founding fathers "did not allow for economic freedom."

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, October 2009]

I saw someone online claim that the following is a quote from Barack Obama's thesis at Columbia contains the following segment:

"... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."  

Origins:   In academia, a thesis is a typical requirement for a graduate degree (although some schools require a thesis for a bachelor's degree as well), an original research project submitted by a student on a topic related to his major. Many universities keep their students' theses on file and make them available to the public as library resources.

In recent years, theses written by U.S. presidential candidates and their spouses have become subjects of great interest, particularly for the possibility that they might provide some insight into the thinking and mindsets of their authors, including the disclosure of once-held viewpoints that might be now be considered controversial and disadvantageous to their current political careers (or those of their spouses). Accordingly, major political figures have become more circumspect about allowing public access to their theses: Former First Lady Hillary Clinton 's 1969 Wellesley College thesis on community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, for example, was not available for examination by the public during the eight years of her husband's presidency, and current First Lady Michelle Obama 's 1985 Princeton University thesis on "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" was the subject of controversy when access to it was initially blocked during her husband's campaign for the presidency. (The Obama campaign made a copy of Michelle's thesis publicly available in February 2008, and Princeton's restriction on access to it was likewise lifted.)

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign (and afterwards), one of the items that was frequently cited as a "missing document" connected with Barack Obama was his own thesis for Columbia University, a school from which he graduated in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in political science (with a specialization in international relations). Politico noted in October 2008 that:

There's not a whole lot of information available about Obama's time at Columbia University in New York, which he attended for three years after attending Occidental College in Los Angeles for one year and from which he graduated in 1983.

His campaign would not release his transcripts, and it says it does not have a copy of his thesis, which dealt with Soviet nuclear disarmament and which has drawn intense interest.

As far as has been determined, Barack Obama did not produce a formal thesis for his degree at Columbia University; the closest match is a paper he wrote during his senior year for an honors seminar in American Foreign Policy. However, Columbia University has said it did not retain a copy of that paper, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt has said that Barack himself does not have a copy, and the professor to whom the paper was submitted has said that he no longer has a copy in his possession either:

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.

[Baron] had saved Obama's senior paper for years, and even hunted for it again [in July 2008] in some boxes. But he said his search was fruitless, and he now thinks he tossed it out [in 2000] during a move.

described [Obama's] 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."

In October 2009, a purported excerpt from Barack Obama's "missing" Columbia thesis began circulating widely on the Internet, one which claimed the paper stated that the Constitution drafted by American's founding fathers "did not allow for economic freedom" and failed to mention "the distribution of wealth" (a play on the common campaign charge that a redistribution of wealth was one of Barack Obama's political goals).

Had someone finally turned up Barack Obama's elusive senior paper? The Pajamas Media web site reported on 21 October 2009 that writer/reporter Joe Klein had been permitted to read the first ten pages of it and had revealed that the paper (supposedly entitled "Aristocracy Reborn") included the excerpt reproduced above.

However, that claim seemed dubious, as a paper on "Aristocracy Reborn," with musings about the Founding Fathers' supposed lack of interest in "economic freedom" and "the distribution of wealth," would have been rather unusual content to find in a senior paper on the topic of Soviet nuclear disarmament, written for a seminar on American foreign policy. In fact, the putative excerpt was fictitious, something lifted from a bit of satire published on the Jumping in Pools blog back on 25 August 2009:

Obama was required to write a 'senior seminar' paper in order to graduate from Columbia. The subject of this paper, which totaled 44 pages, was American government. Entitled Aristocracy Reborn , this paper chronicled the long struggle of the working class against, as Obama put it, "plutocratic thugs with one hand on the money and the other on the government."

In the paper, in which only the first ten pages were given to the general media, Obama decries the plight of the poor: "I see poverty in every place I walk. In Los Angeles and New York, the poor reach to me with bleary eyes and all I can do is sigh."

In part, the future President blames this on the current economic system: "There are many who will defend the 'free market.' But who will defend the single mother of four working three jobs. When a system is allowed to be free at the expense of its citizens, then it is tyranny."

However, the President also singled out the American Constitution: "... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."

Pajamas Media issued a notice a few days after its original report acknowledging that the information about Barack Obama's Columbia thesis was a hoax. Joe Klein also affirmed that he had never seen the paper in question.

Last updated:   25 October 2009

    Popkin, Jim.   "Obama and the Case of the Missing 'Thesis.'"     MSNBC.com.   24 July 2008.

    Saul, Michael.   "Limbaugh Falls for Obama Thesis Hoax."     [New York] Daily News.   25 October 2009.

    Scott, Janny.   "Obama's Account of New York Years Often Differs from What Others Say."     The New York Times.   30 October 2007.

    Vogel, Kenneth P.   "What Are the Candidates Hiding?"     Politico.com.   23 October 2008.

By David Mikkelson

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

Article Tags

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction & Top Questions

At a glance: the Obama presidency

• Politics and ascent to the presidency
• The Nobel Peace Prize and partisanship
• Passage of health care reform
• Economic challenges
• Deepwater Horizon oil spill
• Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
• The midterm congressional election and its aftermath
• Upheaval in the Middle East
• Budget battles
• The 2012 election
• The gun-control debate and sequestration
• Spring scandals and summer challenges
• Taking heat and taking the lead
• Executive action and the 2014 midterm election
• Baltimore riot, Charleston shooting, Supreme Court approval of same-sex marriage, and agreement with Iran
• More executive action
• Historic trips and more shootings
• Life after the presidency
• President Obama’s cabinet

Who were Barack Obama’s parents?

Where did barack obama attend school, what did barack obama do for a living, what did barack obama write, what is barack obama famous for.

Barack Obama

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• BlackPast - Biography of Barack Obama, Jr.
• BlackPast - "What I Want For You—and Every Child" by Barack Obama (2009)
• Miller Center - Biography of Barack Obama
• The White House - Biography of Barack Obama
• Barack Obama Presidential Library - President Barack Obama
• The Nobel Prize - Barack H. Obama
• Barack Obama - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Barack Obama - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Barack Obama’s parents married while students at the University of Hawaii . His father, Barack Obama, Sr., a Kenyan, became an economist in the government of Kenya. His mother, S. Ann Dunham, became an anthropologist. They divorced in 1964. Ann then married (and later divorced) another foreign student, Indonesian Lolo Soetoro.

Barack Obama graduated from Punahou School, an elite academy in Honolulu , and then attended Occidental College before transferring to Columbia University and earning (1983) a B.A. in political science . He graduated (1991) magna cum laude from Harvard University ’s law school and was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review .

After working as a writer and editor in Manhattan , Barack Obama became a community organizer in Chicago , lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago , worked as a civil rights attorney, and then served in the Illinois Senate (1997–2004), as a U.S. senator (2005–08), and as U.S. president (2009–17).

Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father (1995), is the story of his search for his biracial identity by tracing the lives of his now-deceased father and extended family in Kenya . His second book, The Audacity of Hope (2006), is a polemic on his vision for the United States.

Barack Obama was the first African American president of the United States (2009–17). He oversaw the recovery of the U.S. economy (from the Great Recession of 2008–09 ) and the enactment of landmark health care reform (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ). In 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Are DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and the DREAM Act, supported by Barack Obama, good for America?

Whether DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and the DREAM Act, supported by Barack Obama, are good for America is widely debated. Some say the policies are are good for the U.S. economy and deporting Dreamers is cruel. Others say the policies only encourage more illegal immigration and amnesty should not be given to law breakers. For more on the Dreamer debate, visit ProCon.org .

Recent News

Barack Obama (born August 4, 1961, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.) is the 44th president of the United States (2009–17) and the first African American to hold the office. Before winning the presidency, Obama represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate (2005–08). He was the third African American to be elected to that body since the end of Reconstruction (1877). In 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a teenage goatherd in rural Kenya , won a scholarship to study in the United States , and eventually became a senior economist in the Kenyan government. Obama’s mother, S. Ann Dunham , grew up in Kansas , Texas , and Washington state before her family settled in Honolulu . In 1960 she and Barack Sr. met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii and married less than a year later.

When Obama was age two, Barack Sr. left to study at Harvard University ; shortly thereafter, in 1964, Ann and Barack Sr. divorced. (Obama saw his father only one more time, during a brief visit when Obama was 10.) Later Ann remarried, this time to another foreign student, Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia , with whom she had a second child, Maya. Obama lived for several years in Jakarta with his half sister, mother, and stepfather. While there, Obama attended both a government-run school where he received some instruction in Islam and a Catholic private school where he took part in Christian schooling.

He returned to Hawaii in 1971 and lived in a modest apartment, sometimes with his grandparents and sometimes with his mother (she remained for a time in Indonesia, returned to Hawaii, and then went abroad again—partly to pursue work on a Ph.D.—before divorcing Soetoro in 1980). For a brief period his mother was aided by government food stamps, but the family mostly lived a middle-class existence. In 1979 Obama graduated from Punahou School, an elite college preparatory academy in Honolulu.

Obama attended Occidental College in suburban Los Angeles for two years and then transferred to Columbia University in New York City , where in 1983 he received a bachelor’s degree in political science . Influenced by professors who pushed him to take his studies more seriously, Obama experienced great intellectual growth during college and for a couple of years thereafter. He led a rather ascetic life and read works of literature and philosophy by William Shakespeare , Friedrich Nietzsche , Toni Morrison , and others. After serving for a couple of years as a writer and editor for Business International Corp., a research, publishing, and consulting firm in Manhattan , he took a position in 1985 as a community organizer on Chicago ’s largely impoverished Far South Side. He returned to school three years later and graduated magna cum laude in 1991 from Harvard University ’s law school, where he was the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review . While a summer associate in 1989 at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin, Obama had met Chicago native Michelle Robinson , a young lawyer at the firm. The two married in 1992.

After receiving his law degree, Obama moved to Chicago and became active in the Democratic Party . He organized Project Vote, a drive that registered tens of thousands of African Americans on voting rolls and that is credited with helping Democrat Bill Clinton win Illinois and capture the presidency in 1992. The effort also helped make Carol Moseley Braun , an Illinois state legislator, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate . During this period, Obama wrote his first book and saw it published. The memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995), is the story of Obama’s search for his biracial identity by tracing the lives of his now-deceased father and his extended family in Kenya. Obama lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago and worked as an attorney on civil rights issues.

Help inform the discussion

• X (Twitter)

Barack Obama: Life Before the Presidency

Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Hawaii. His parents, who met as students at the University of Hawaii, were Ann Dunham, a white American from Kansas, and Barack Obama Sr., a black Kenyan studying in the United States. Obama's father left the family when Obama was two and, after further studies at Harvard University, returned to Kenya, where he died in an automobile accident nineteen years later. After his parents divorced, Obama's mother married another foreign student at the University of Hawaii, Lolo Soetoro of Indonesia. From age six through ten, Obama lived with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia, where he attended Catholic and Muslim schools. “I was raised as an Indonesian child and a Hawaiian child and as a black child and as a white child,” Obama later recalled. “And so what I benefited from is a multiplicity of cultures that all fed me.”

Concerned for his education, Obama’s mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, and to attend Hawaii’s prestigious Punahou School from fifth grade through graduation from high school. While Obama was in school, his mother divorced Soetoro, returned to Hawaii to study cultural anthropology at the university, and then went back to Indonesia to do field research. Living with his grandparents, Obama was a good but not outstanding student at Punahou. He played varsity basketball and, as he later admitted, “dabbled in drugs and alcohol,” including marijuana and cocaine. As for religion, Obama later wrote, because his parents and grandparents were nonbelievers, “I was not raised in a religious household.”

Obama's mother, who “to the end of her life [in 1995] would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal,” deeply admired the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and taught her son, he later wrote, that “To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.” But, as culturally diverse as Hawaii was, its African American population was miniscule. With no father or other family members to serve as role models (his relationship with his white grandfather was difficult), Obama later reflected, “I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.”

Obama left Hawaii for college, enrolling first at Occidental College in Los Angeles for his freshman and sophomore years, and then at Columbia University in New York City. He read deeply and widely about political and international affairs, graduating from Columbia with a political science major in 1983. (A movie version of his Columbia years, Barry , was released in 2016.) After spending an additional year in New York as a researcher with Business International Group, a global business consulting firm, Obama accepted an offer to work as a community organizer in Chicago's largely poor and black South Side. As biographer David Mendell notes in his 2007 book, Obama: From Promise to Power , the job gave Obama “his first deep immersion into the African American community he had longed to both understand and belong to.”

Obama's main assignment as an organizer was to launch the church-funded Developing Communities Project and, in particular, to organize residents of Altgeld Gardens to pressure Chicago's city hall to improve conditions in the poorly maintained public housing project. His efforts met with some success, but he concluded that, faced with a complex city bureaucracy, “I just can't get things done here without a law degree.”

In 1988, Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he excelled as a student, graduating magna cum laude and winning election as president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review for the academic year 1990-1991. Although Obama was a liberal, he won the election by persuading the journal’s outnumbered conservative staffers that he would treat their views fairly, which he is widely acknowledged to have done. As the first African American president in the long history of the law review, Obama drew widespread media attention and a contract from Random House to write a book about race relations. The book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995), turned out to be mostly a personal memoir, focusing in particular on his struggle to come to terms with his identity as a black man raised by whites in the absence of his African father.

After directing Illinois Project Vote, a voter registration drive aimed at increasing black turnout in the 1992 election, Obama accepted positions as an attorney with the civil rights law firm of Miner, Barnhill and Galland and as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He launched his first campaign for political office in 1996 after his district’s state senator, Alice Palmer, decided to run for Congress. With Palmer’s support, Obama announced his candidacy to replace her in the Illinois legislature. When Palmer's congressional campaign faltered, she decided to run for reelection instead. But Obama refused to withdraw from the race, successfully challenged the validity of Palmer’s voter petitions, and was easily elected after her name was kept off the ballot.

Obama’s time in the legislature initially was frustrating. Republicans controlled the state senate, and many of his black Democratic colleagues resented the hardball tactics he had employed against Palmer. But he adapted, developing cordial personal relations with legislators of both parties and cultivating Senate Democratic leader Emil Jones Jr., another African American senator from Chicago, as a mentor. Obama was able to get campaign finance reform and crime legislation enacted even when his party was in the minority, and after 2002, when the Democrats won control of the Senate, he became a leading legislator on a wide range of issues, passing nearly 300 bills aimed at helping children, old people, labor unions, and the poor.

Obama’s one serious misstep during his early political career (he later called it “an ill-considered race” in which he got “spanked” by the voters) was a 2000 Democratic primary challenge to US Representative Bobby Rush. Rush was a former Illinois Black Panther leader who subsequently entered mainstream politics as a Chicago alderman and was elected to Congress from the South Side’s first congressional district in 1992. Obama was not nearly as well known as the popular Rush, and the combination of his unusual upbringing and his association with predominantly white elite universities such as Columbia, Harvard, and Chicago aroused doubts about his authenticity as a black man among the district’s overwhelmingly African American voters. Obama suffered what he labeled “a drubbing,” losing to Rush by a 30-percentage point margin. Rush remained in the House; he was reelected to his thirteenth consecutive term in 2016.

Returning to the state senate, Obama began eyeing a 2004 race for the US Senate seat held by Peter Fitzgerald, an unpopular first-term Republican who decided not to run for reelection. In October 2002, as Congress was considering a resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to launch a war to depose the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Obama spoke at an antiwar rally in Chicago. “I don't oppose all wars,” he declared. “What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.” By speaking out against Bush’s war policies, Obama set himself apart from the other leading candidates for the Democratic Senate nomination, as well as from most Senate Democrats with presidential ambitions, including Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, John Kerry of Massachusetts, and John Edwards of North Carolina. Obama’s initially unpopular antiwar stance eventually worked to his political advantage as the war became increasingly unpopular with the passage of time.

Advised by political consultant David Axelrod, who had a strong record of helping black candidates succeed in majority-white constituencies, Obama assembled a coalition of African Americans and white liberals to win the Democratic Senate primary with 53 percent of the vote, more than all five of his opponents combined. He then moved toward the political center to wage his general election campaign against Republican nominee Jack Ryan, an attractive candidate who, after making hundreds of millions of dollars as an investor, had left the business world to teach in an inner-city Chicago school. But Ryan was forced to drop out of the race when scandalous details about his divorce were made public, and Obama coasted to an easy victory against Ryan’s replacement on the ballot, black conservative Republican Alan Keyes. Obama won by the largest margin in the history of Senate elections in Illinois, 70 percent to 27 percent.

In addition to his election, the other highlight of 2004 for Obama was his wildly successful keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America,” he declared. “There’s a United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There’s a United States of America.” Obama encapsulated his speech’s themes of optimism and unity with the phrase, “the audacity of hope,” which he borrowed from Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright was the pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, a large and influential black congregation where Obama was baptized when he became a Christian in 1988. Obama also used the phrase as the title of his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), which became a national bestseller in the wake of his newfound national popularity. Describing his religious conversion, Obama wrote, “I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”

Consulting Editor: Michael Nelson

Professor of Political Science Rhodes College

Barack Obama's education

Punahou School, Hawaii 

Occidental College, Los Angeles

Columbia University, New York City

Harvard Law School, Boston

More Resources

Barack obama presidency page, barack obama essays, life in brief, life before the presidency (current essay), campaigns & elections, domestic affairs, foreign affairs, family life, impact and legacy.

Alumni Focus

Obama first made history at harvard law.

It was as a law student that Obama first made history—and national headlines—when he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in the spring of 1990.

And as a law student, Obama met many professors and classmates who would prove helpful in his meteoric political rise from state senator to president of the United States in five years.

Each seems to have a story about how much Obama stood out.

Sure, Obama’s unique, and by now, familiar personal history, set him apart. He arrived on campus at the age of 27 in the fall of 1988, older than many of his classmates after a stint as a community organizer in Chicago. Professor Kenneth Mack ’91, his classmate and friend, says Obama didn’t speak much at first about other aspects of his unique background, including a childhood spent in Hawaii and Indonesia or the fact that his mother was white.

Most remarkable, given his complex identity, was how comfortable Obama seemed with himself. “Barack’s identity, his sense of self was so settled,” recalled Cassandra Butts ’91, who met him in line at the financial aid office, in an interview with PBS’ “Frontline.” “He didn’t strike us in law school as someone who was searching for himself.”

Obama’s performance inside and outside the classroom attracted more notice than his distinctive personal story. In the spring of his first year at law school, Obama stopped by the office of Professor Laurence Tribe ’66 inquiring about becoming a research assistant.

Tribe rarely hired first-year students but recalls being struck by Obama’s unusual combination of intelligence, curiosity and maturity. He was so impressed in fact, that he hired Obama on the spot—and wrote his name and phone number on his calendar that day—March 31, 1989—for posterity.

Obama helped research a complicated article Tribe wrote making connections between physics and constitutional law as well as a book about abortion. The following year, Obama enrolled in Tribe’s constitutional law course.

Tribe likes to say he had taught about 4,000 students before Obama and another 4,000 since, yet none has impressed him more.

Professor Martha Minow recalls: “He had a kind of eloquence and respect from his peers that was really quite remarkable,” Minow says. When he spoke in her class on law and society, “everyone became very attentive and very quiet.”

Artur Davis ‘93 still vividly recalls how much Obama inspired him with a speech he gave during orientation week on striving for excellence and mastery. Davis, now a United States Congressman from Alabama, insists he left that speech by Obama convinced he’d just heard a future Supreme Court justice—or president.

Obama displayed other traits in law school besides eloquence that would define his success as a presidential candidate. “You could see many of his attributes, approach to politics and ability to bring people together back then,” says Michael Froman ’91, who worked with Obama on the Law Review.

As a campus leader, he successfully navigated the fractious political disputes raging on campus. By 1991, student protestors demanding the school hire more black faculty had staged a sit-in inside the dean’s office and filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination.

Obama spoke at one protest rally, but largely preferred to stay behind the scenes and lead by example, recalls one of the protest leaders, Keith Boykin ‘92. Obama opted against taking sides in the ideological disputes that often divided the politically polarized Law Review staff, casting himself instead as a mediator and conciliator. That approach earned the enduring respect of Law Review members including those not necessarily inclined to agree with his political views today.

“He tended not to enter these debates and disputes but rather bring people together and forge compromises,” says Bradford Berenson ’91, who was among the relatively small number of conservatives on the Law Review staff.

Modal Gallery

Gallery block modal gallery.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• The Big Story
• Newsletters
• Steven Levy's Plaintext Column
• WIRED Classics from the Archive
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive

When WIRED asked me to guest-edit the November issue, I didn’t hesitate. I know it’s the height of election season, and I happen to have a day job that keeps me pretty busy. But given the chance to immerse myself in the possibility of interplanetary travel or join a deep-dive conversation on artificial intelligence, I’m going to say yes. I love this stuff. Always have. It’s why my favorite movie of last year was The Martian . Of course, I’m predisposed to love any movie where Americans defy the odds and inspire the world. But what really grabbed me about the film is that it shows how humans—through our ingenuity, our commitment to fact and reason, and ultimately our faith in each other—can science the heck out of just about any problem.

I’m a guy who grew up watching Star Trek —and I’d be lying if I said that show didn’t have at least some small influence on my worldview. What I loved about it was its optimism, the fundamental belief at its core that the people on this planet, for all our varied backgrounds and outward differ­ences, could come together to build a better tomorrow.

I still believe that. I believe we can work together to do big things that raise the fortunes of people here at home and all over the world. And even if we’ve got some work left to do on faster-than-light travel, I still believe science and technology is the warp drive that accelerates that kind of change for everybody.

Here’s another thing I believe: We are far better equipped to take on the challenges we face than ever before. I know that might sound at odds with what we see and hear these days in the cacophony of cable news and social media. But the next time you’re bombarded with over-the-top claims about how our country is doomed or the world is coming apart at the seams, brush off the cynics and fearmongers. Because the truth is, if you had to choose any time in the course of human history to be alive, you’d choose this one. Right here in America, right now.

Let’s start with the big picture. By almost every measure, this country is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, 30 years ago, or even eight years ago. Leave aside the sepia tones of the 1950s, a time when women, minorities, and ­people with disabilities were shut out of huge parts of American life. Just since 1983, when I finished college, things like crime rates, teen pregnancy rates, and poverty rates are all down. Life expectancy is up. The share of Americans with a college education is up too. Tens of mil­lions of Americans recently gained the security of health insurance. Blacks and Latinos have risen up the ranks to lead our businesses and communities. Women are a larger part of our workforce and are earning more money. Once-quiet factories are alive again, with assembly lines churning out the components of a clean-energy age.

And just as America has gotten better, so has the world. More countries know democracy. More kids are going to school. A smaller share of humans know chronic hunger or live in extreme poverty. In nearly two dozen countries—including our own—­people now have the freedom to marry whomever they love. And last year the nations of the world joined together to forge the most comprehen­sive agreement to battle climate change in human history.

This kind of progress hasn’t happened on its own. It happened because people organized and voted for better prospects; because leaders enacted smart, forward-­looking policies; because people’s perspectives opened up, and with them, societies did too. But this progress also happened because we scienced the heck out of our challenges. Science is how we were able to combat acid rain and the AIDS epidemic. Technology is what allowed us to communicate across oceans and empathize with one another when a wall came down in Berlin or a TV personality came out. Without Norman Borlaug’s wheat, we could not feed the world’s hungry. Without Grace Hopper’s code, we might still be analyzing data with pencil and paper.

That’s one reason why I’m so optimistic about the future: the constant churn of scientific progress. Think about the changes we’ve seen just during my presidency. When I came into office, I broke new ground by pecking away at a Black­Berry. Today I read my briefings on an iPad and explore national parks through a virtual-­reality headset. Who knows what kind of changes are in store for our next president and the ones who follow?

That’s why I centered this issue on the idea of frontiers—stories and ideas about what’s over the next horizon, about what lies on the other side of the barriers we haven’t broken through yet. I wanted to explore how we get past where we are today to build a world that’s even better for us all—as individuals, as communities, as a country, and as a planet.

Because the truth is, while we’ve made great progress, there’s no shortage of challenges ahead: Climate change. Economic inequality. Cybersecurity. Terrorism and gun violence. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and ­antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Just as in the past, to clear these hurdles we’re going to need everyone—policy makers and commu­nity leaders, teachers and workers and grassroots activists, presidents and soon-to-be-former presidents. And to accelerate that change, we need science. We need researchers and academics and engineers; programmers, surgeons, and botanists. And most important, we need not only the folks at MIT or Stanford or the NIH but also the mom in West Virginia tinkering with a 3-D printer, the girl on the South Side of Chicago learning to code, the dreamer in San Antonio seeking investors for his new app, the dad in North Dakota learning new skills so he can help lead the green revolution.

That’s how we will overcome the challenges we face: by unleashing the power of all of us for all of us. Not just for those of us who are fortunate, but for everybody. That means creating not just a quicker way to deliver takeout downtown but also a system that distributes excess produce to communities where too many kids go to bed hungry. Not just inventing a service that fills your car with gas but also creating cars that don’t need fossil fuels at all. Not just making our social networks more fun for sharing memes but also harnessing their power to counter terrorist ideologies and online hate speech.

The point is, we need today’s big thinkers thinking big. Think like you did when you were watching Star Trek or Star Wars or Inspector Gadget . Think like the kids I meet every year at the White House Science Fair. We started this event in 2010 with a ­simple premise: We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated but the winner of the science fair. Since then, I’ve met young people who are tackling everything from destroying cancer cells to using algae to produce clean energy to distributing vaccines to remote areas of the world—all before most of them can even vote.

And as I meet with these young ­people, I can’t help but wonder what might be next—what might happen at a White House Science Fair in five years or 20 years or 50 years? I imagine a student who grows an artificial pancreas right in front of the president—an idea that eventually eliminates waiting lists for lifesaving organs. I imagine the girls who discover a new fuel based on only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide; the teenager who makes voting and civic activism as addictive as scrolling through your Twitter feed; the boy from Idaho who grows potatoes from a plot of soil brought back from our colony on Mars. And I imagine some future president strolling out on the South Lawn with a student who invented a new kind of telescope. As the president looks through the lens, the girl turns the telescope to a planet she just discovered, orbiting a faraway star at the very edge of our galaxy. Then she says she’s hard at work on another invention—one that will take us there someday.

These kinds of moments are closer than you think. My hope is that these kids—maybe some of your kids or grandkids—will be even more curious and creative and confident than we are today. But that depends on us. We must continue to nurture our children’s curiosity. We must keep funding scientific, technological, and medical research. And above all, we must embrace that quintes­sentially American compulsion to race for new frontiers and push the bound­aries of what’s possible. If we do, I’m hopeful that tomorrow’s Americans will be able to look back at what we did—the diseases we conquered, the social problems we solved, the planet we protected for them—and when they see all that, they’ll plainly see that theirs is the best time to be alive. And then they’ll take a page from our book and write the next great chapter in our American story, emboldened to keep going where no one has gone before.

This article appears in the November 2016 issue. Subscribe now .

Grooming by Jackie Walker

Pardon Our Interruption

As you were browsing something about your browser made us think you were a bot. There are a few reasons this might happen:

• You've disabled JavaScript in your web browser.
• You're a power user moving through this website with super-human speed.
• You've disabled cookies in your web browser.
• A third-party browser plugin, such as Ghostery or NoScript, is preventing JavaScript from running. Additional information is available in this support article .

To regain access, please make sure that cookies and JavaScript are enabled before reloading the page.

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Barack Obama

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 19, 2022 | Original: November 9, 2009

Barack Obama , the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president, was elected over Senator John McCain of Arizona on November 4, 2008. Obama, a former senator from Illinois whose campaign’s slogan was “Change we can believe in” and “Yes we can,” was subsequently elected to a second term over Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. 

A winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Obama’s presidency was marked by the landmark passage of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”; the killing of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team Six; the Iran Nuclear Deal and the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Court.

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small village in Nyanza Province, Kenya, as a member of the Luo ethnicity. He won a scholarship to study economics at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Wichita, Kansas , whose father had worked on oil rigs during the Great Depression and fought with the U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Did you know? Not only was Obama the first African American president, he was also the first to be born outside the continental United States. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. He would see his son only once more before dying in a car accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and her new husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son to Jakarta in the late 1960s, where Ann worked at the U.S. embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private school where, as he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father , he first began to understand the tensions inherent in his mixed racial background. After two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 with a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Why Was the Election of 2008 Important?

Learn about the events surrounding the historical election of 2008: how Barack Obama became the Democratic presidential contender against Hillary Clinton and how he ultimately beat John McCain to become the first black president in U.S. history.

Inaugural Address: Barack H. Obama

An excerpt from Barack H. Obama’s inaugural address on Tuesday, January 20, 2009.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Ted Sorensen, JFK’s 1960 Campaign speechwriter, tells the story of a congratulatory misunderstanding on the campaign trail.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working in corporate research and at the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago , where he took a job as a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. For the next several years, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s largely Black South Side. Obama would later call the experience “the best education I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered in 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School grad—while working as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church of Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, winning election to the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat from the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control during his years in the state senate, Obama was able to build support among both Democrats and Republicans in drafting legislation on ethics and health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early childhood education programs and worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic primary for the U. S. House of Representatives seat held by the popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. As a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early opponent of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq . 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002, he spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq: “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars…I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

The Obama Years: A Nine-Part Oral History

The former president and 24 other members of his administration weigh in on their proudest moments, their regrets and the belief that they left it all on the field.

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after only one term, Obama decided to run. He won 52 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican opponent in the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, shooting to national prominence with his eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put the relatively unknown, young senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington as only the third African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction .

During his tenure, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma , he created a website that tracks all federal spending, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ trust in government. He partnered with another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana , on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where thousands of people lined the streets to welcome him. He published his second book, The Audacity of Hope , in October 2006.

2008 Presidential Campaign

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for president of the United States. A victory in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the early frontrunner, the former first lady and current New York Senator Hillary Clinton , whom he outlasted in a grueling primary campaign to claim the Democratic nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate. Biden had been a U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate for president and served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain , a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever female vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build support at the grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life story and inspiring message of hope and change to draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in the U.S. and on a campaign trip abroad. They worked to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved in the election.

A crushing financial crisis in the months leading up to the election shifted the nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they had the best plan for economic improvement. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle with cancer on November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She had been a tremendously influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for office from her home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at polling stations around the nation heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds ( Virginia , Indiana) and key battleground states ( Florida , Ohio ) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic nature of his win while reflecting on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.”

Barack Obama’s First Term as President

Barack Obama was sworn in as the first Black president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance record, with 1.8 million people gathering in the cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. with the same Bible President Abraham Lincoln used at his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days into office, giving legal protection in the fight for equal pay for women. To address the financial crisis he inherited, he passed a stimulus bill, bailed out the struggling auto industry and Wall Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the foreign policy arena, Obama opened up talks with Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and set a withdrawal date for American troops in Iraq. He was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as universal healthcare or “ Obamacare .” Its goal was to give every American access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, but then providing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011,  Osama bin Laden , the mastermind of the September 11 Attacks , was captured and killed by Seal Team Six. No Americans were lost in the operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda .

Barack Obama’s Second Term as President

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term in 2012, beating out Republican Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by several international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly against the use of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a Russian proposal that it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of his international diplomacy was his work on the Iran Nuclear Deal , which allowed inspectors into Iran to ensure it was under the pledged limit of enriched uranium in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump , withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s presidency came when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015. Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast and diverse; a nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences and stories, but bound by our shared ideal that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your own destiny .” 

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

The Love Letters Of A Young Barack Obama On View At Emory University Library

Brian Naylor

This image provided by Emory University shows letters sent by then future President Barack Obama to his college girlfriend Alexandra McNear. The university is making the letters available to researchers Thursday. Ann Borden/Emory University/AP hide caption

This image provided by Emory University shows letters sent by then future President Barack Obama to his college girlfriend Alexandra McNear. The university is making the letters available to researchers Thursday.

Few of us would want the love letters we wrote to our sweethearts at age 21 released to the public. But when you've been president everything in the past is ripe for perusal by historians, researchers and journalists.

And so it is with the love letters of former President Barack Obama — excerpts of which have been released by Emory University's Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, where the letters a young Obama wrote to then-girlfriend Alexandra McNear are now part of the collection.

The letters were written between September 1982 and April 1984, after Obama had transferred from Occidental College in Los Angeles to Columbia University in New York City. McNear remained in California.

The first letter in the collection, which the university says Obama wrote at a campus cafe, "drinking V8 juice and listening to a badly scratched opera being broadcast," as he put it, finds Obama articulating what would become familiar themes in his later writing, feelings of not belonging and alienation (themes that many 21-year-olds might find familiar).

In September 1982, he writes of a college friend who will soon marry and a high school friend who manages a supermarket.

"I must admit large dollops of envy for both groups, my American friends consuming their life in the comfortable mainstream, the foreign friends in the international business world," Obama wrote McNear. "Caught without a class, a structure, or a tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me.

"The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions, classes, make them mine, me theirs. Taken separately, they're unacceptable and untenable."

He ends the letter, which was written on yellow-lined note paper, "I trust you know that I miss you, that my concern for you is as wide as the air, my confidence in you as deep as the sea, my love rich and plentiful, Love, Barack."

In a November 1982 letter, Obama writes of the enjoyment he takes in his relationship with McNear, and the challenge of "forging a unity, mixing it up, constructing the truth to be found between the seams of individual lives. All of which requires breaking some sweat. Like a good basketball game. Or a fine dance. Or making love.

"We will talk long and deep, Alex, and see what we can make of this."

In June 1983, Obama writes McNear during a trip he took back to Indonesia, where he lived as a child and where his mother and sister remain.

"I can't speak the language well anymore. I'm treated with a mixture of puzzlement, deference and scorn because I'm American, my money and my plane ticket back to the U.S. overriding my blackness. I see old dim roads, rickety homes winding back towards the fields, old routes of mine, routes I no longer have access to."

He also expresses to McNear some uncertainty about the future of their relationship. "I think of you often, though I stay confused about my feelings," Obama writes. "It seems we will ever want what we cannot have; that's what binds us; that's what keeps us apart."

Later that year, Obama and McNear are no longer lovers, but remain friends. He writes her of his struggles finding a job in New York, and of his tight finances. "Salaries in the community organizations are too low to survive on right now, so I hope to work in some more conventional capacity for a year, allowing me to store up enough nuts to pursue those interests next," he says.

"One week I can't pay postage to mail a resume and writing sample," he writes, "the next I have to bounce a check to rent a typewriter."

By 1984, Obama has found a job at Business International where he says, "[c]uriously enough, I've emerged as one of the 'promising young men' of Business International, with everyone slapping my back and praising my work."

He writes he has "cultivated strong bonds with the black women and their children in the company, who work as librarians, receptionists, etc.," while "the only black men are teen messengers."

He concludes:

"The resistance I wage does wear me down — because of the position, the best I can hope for is a draw, since I have no vehicle or forum to try to change things. For this reason, I can't stay very much longer than a year. Thankfully, I don't yet feel like the job has dulled my senses or done irreparable damage to my values, although it has stalled their growth."

Emory says facsimiles of Obama's letters will be on view Friday. The letters themselves will be available to scholars and students by appointment.

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Russia

Barack Obama Essay Samples

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Russia , Obama , President , Politics , World , America , Leadership , United States

Words: 1400

Published: 03/30/2020

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

Barack Hussein Obama is the current President of the United States. He was born on the 4th of August, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1979, he finished school Punahou School and entered Occidental College in Los-Angeles. Then Obama graduated the Columbia University, where he made first steps as a politician. After receiving a Bachelor’s degree, he began to work as a corrector in the International Business Corporation. In 1985, he moved to Chicago and worked there as a community organizer. Three years later Obama began to study law in Harvard University. There he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review and Harvard Law Club. After graduation Harvard, he returned to Chicago and became civil rights attorney. In addition, he worked in the Democratic Party. Barack Obama is a talented writer. In 1995, Barack published his first book “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” that became successful. Then he became a Senator from Illinois from 1997 to 2004. After that, he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. In 2008 Barack Obama became the 44th President of the US. Despite his lack of administrative experience, this statesman with a brilliant mind and great eloquence became a living symbol of changes and upcoming great accomplishments. One reason for its popularity is the new political style, the essences of which are common sense, de-ideologization, practical experience in dealing with daily challenges. The first Afro-American President was a leader of a new type without racial prejudices and other stereotypes. Barack Obama is a man of extraordinary views and beliefs. Obama speaks about women's right to abortion, the development of alternative fuel sources, the weakening of the policy toward immigrants. He did not declare a clear doctrine. His presidential campaign was based on vague promises of changes. Today, some of the features of his unique leadership are obvious. Firstly, propensity to apologize. He has apologized to Turkey for dark periods in the American history. Then he apologized to Japan for the nuclear bombardment during the Second World War. Undoubtedly, that, in such way, Barack Obama distance himself from an aggressive policy of Bush, but such behavior is also connected with personal traits. Secondly, extreme pragmatism in international relations. Being a realist by nature, Barack Obama pursues a pragmatic foreign policy. Sometimes he tends to neglect the allies and "cooperate" with rivals and enemies in order to achieve certain results. The third characteristic of the Obama’s administration policy is the appeal to the negative experience of the United States and their awareness of the right path. The United States have understood the lessons of foreign interventions and the need of setting their sights lower. Today, Washington is looking for partnership and cooperation with the countries of Europe and Middle East, China and others. The multilateralist approach to the world has bent over backwards to mend ties between the US and their European allies, reset relations between the US and Russia, to maintain a strong relationship with China and become the integrated player in the UN. He treats European countries as equal partners, not subservient pawns. The leadership style of Barack Obama is mostly collaborative. He is an attentive listener and tries to understand all arguments from opponents or supporters to make a decision. During the negotiations, the Obama team is much more open to negotiations and talks and diplomacy as a first means of dealing with world problems and even rogue states. The military action only to be used as an absolute last resort. Barack Obama prefers to pursue vigorous diplomacy ("Barack Obama | The Plaid Avenger"). The strong point of Obama as a politician and a negotiator is his eloquence, oratory skills and charm. During his speeches, he has an inner tranquility and has a lot of self-control. He managed to combine new political technologies with traditional organizational skill. He developed own unique style on the basis of assimilating the best examples from other orators. However, some people criticize him for lack of emotionality. Obama created a new style of “bottom-up, empowering” leadership focusing on collaboration. He developed a grassroots movement by building an ever-expanding organization of empowered leaders, who in turn engaged people from their social networks like Facebook. These trends portend massive changes in the 21st century leadership of American institutions, led by the Obama government itself (Bill n.p. ). The greatest accomplishment is the Affordable Care Act, which makes a universal health care. The other accomplishments are ending wars, anti-terrorism efforts and stabilizing the economy. He came out America from the economic crisis. Barack Obama created new jobs, supported equal pay for men and women, recapitalized banks, pursued credit card reforms and reduced taxes for middle-class. He saved General Motors and Chrysler from bankruptcy. In the sphere of environmental protection, Obama contributed to the regulation of greenhouse emissions and invested in renewable technologies. He took away Osama bin Laden, made the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, began the drawdown from Afghanistan and signed the non-proliferation treaty with Russia. In addition, he fought with Somali pirates. Barack Obama improved America's image around the world. Last decades America was perceived as the aggressor that made interventions to other countries and did not care about international opinion. The new image shows that the US is cooperative, benevolent and tolerant to other cultures. Obama’s popularity is also determined by personality traits, friendly manners, mindful decision-making, and confidence. He is charismatic, intellectual and high-educated person. I am impressed by his tolerance to Republicans and people with other views. He is logic and rational. Also, I have noticed that the direct eye contact with listeners is very important to him. His abilities to contact with audience and demonstrate brilliant leadership qualities cause admiration among people. Moreover, Barack Obama earned people`s respect for his loyalty to family. His image contributes to his career. He is always immaculately dressed and creates an impression of reliable, trustworthy person. His appearance, strict clothes and clean-shaved face creates an image of straightforward, honest and hard-working person with strong moral principles. In my opinion, Barack Obama is one of the greatest presidents America, because he is passionate for human rights and social issues. He improved race relations. Barack Obama signed the bill for equal salaries for men and women, established services for overcoming domestic violence and sexual assault. During his presidency, he has changed a healthcare system and established a universal healthcare. It was for a long time a crucial issue in American society. Today, millions of children from poor families can receive help without health insurance. He has increased federal funding and doubled the amount of grant money allocated to students seeking a higher education to cover rising tuition costs. His policies and initiatives for clean energy economy have had an incredible impact on the future of the nation. For instance, the U.S. reduced oil imports by more than 10 percent from 2010 - 2011. The Administration made attempts to reduce dependence on oil, promote alternative energy and invest in renewable technologies. Obama brought the troops from Iraq and finally, ended the war there. In addition, he is ending the conflict in Afghanistan. Obama’s fight against terrorism was successful. At last, Osama Bin Laden was removed. Unfortunately, Barack Obama could not fulfill all promises, and it is not his fault. In the US the President is dependent from congress, so he could not pass his laws through it. Nevertheless, Barack Obama is a great leader due to his accomplishments and personal traits. He became a cultural and historical symbol and called us for better awareness of personal responsibility for our words and actions. The U.S. President Obama has demonstrated the ability to provide strategic guidance, understanding the changes of the modern world and the new role of the United States.

“Barack Obama | The Plaid Avenger”. Plaid Avenger Inc, n.d. Web. 7 Mar. 2014 <http://www.plaidavenger.com/leaders/profile/barack-obama/> Bill, George. Barack Obama: A Leader for the “We” Generation. Businessweek, 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 7 Mar. 2014 <http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-11-11/barack-obama-a-leader-for-the-we-generationbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice>.

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 127

This paper is created by writer with

ID 272799898

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Example of research proposal on web site evaluation memo, example of report on discution of stategic management and evaluation of the body shop strategy, example of advanced financial management essay, essay on final exam civil war, example of hearing impairment and its impact on education research paper, example of essay on personal model of leadership, example of chinas presence in africa argumentative essay, my favorite place term paper examples, free critical thinking on marx vs freud, free book review on the life of mahatma gandhi, external debt sustainability of us essay sample, creative writing on mccarthys the road, hizballah the lebanese party of god and its rise to global terrorism research paper, example of research paper on discrimination or prejudice, research paper on healthy condition requires healthy lifestyle, transportation of energy research paper, example of course work on national oil, plum essays, trolley essays, kitten essays, absolutist essays, stupidity essays, machismo essays, patch essays, shaikh essays, mascia essays, fisk essays, assault case studies, apartment case studies, opera case studies, retention case studies, disneyland case studies, southwest airlines case studies, beach case studies, rhythm and blues research papers, inexperience research papers, malfunction research papers, landmark research papers, balance of power research papers, lattice research papers, naturalist research papers, international organization research papers.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

A Plus Topper

Improve your Grades

Essay on Barack Obama | Barack Obama Essay for Students and Children in English

February 13, 2024 by Prasanna

Essay on Barack Obama:  Barack Obama has been a very influential leader and has brought a revolutionary change in America’s United States. He has had served in the office of the President of America from 2009 to 2017. He was elected from the Democratic Party of United States of America. He was the first African-American individual to have held the President’s office and was the 44th President of America. His life is an inspiration to many as he had come across many struggles and had succeeded in his life.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long and Short Essays on Barack Obama for Students and Kids in English

We are providing the students with essay samples on an extended essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on Barack Obama’s topic.

Long Essay on Barack Obama 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Barack Obama is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Barack Obama was one of the most influential people of the world and the man with a difference. He has served as the President of the United States of America. He was the 44th President of America. He was elected in the year 2009 to the office of the President. He was the first-ever African-American President of America. He won the elections for the post of the President from the Democratic Party of America.

Donald Trump succeeded him. He was not only a Politician but also a lawyer and author. He was also an educator and community organizer. He held the Master of Arts in Economics degree and has done fantastic and remarkable works as a financial analyst. He is a very talented person.

The full name of Barack Obama is Barack Hussain Obama II. He was born on 4 August 1961. He hailed from Honolulu, Hawaii, in the United States of America. He was born to an American mother, Ann Dunham and an African father, Barack Obama Sr. He graduated from the Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Being a black person had faced many struggles while fighting many social stigmas and discrimination and stereotypes; however, he raised his thinking skills and broadened his mind to achieve bigger and better lives. So, he could succeed what he is today and brought do many good changes in society.

In 1997, Obama had represented the 13th district and continued till the year of 2004 in the Illinois Senate. He was elected in 2009 and re-elected in 2013 too. Under his presidentship, America has undergone several favourable advantages and revolutionary changes in the economic and health sectors. It was during his tenure of President, and the same-sex marriage was legalized. This was perhaps the best social transformation that gained momentum during his period and paved ways to get legalized in many other countries.

He is married to Mitchelle Obama. He has two daughters, namely, Malia and Nasha. Barack Obama is an outstanding personality he had respect for all kind of jobs. In other words, he emphasized the dignity of labour. After he retired from the President of America’s office, his daughter worked as a waitress at some cafe. This shows his simplicity in life and the valuable virtues of self-dependency, with which he had nurtured his children. Indeed, there a lot to learn from this great personality.

Barack Obama has been awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in the category of Peace in the year of 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” It is quite surprising to find that a man of such high stature and power leading a simple life, raising a family like a decent family man, being kind and considerate towards everybody. His virtue of humility has attracted everyone towards him.

Short Essay on Barack Obama 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Barack Obama is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Barrack Hussain Obama was the 44th President of the United States of America. He has served as the President of the United States of America from 2009 to 2017. He was the African-American President. He was born in Hawaii. He was a legislator, financial analyst as well as a lawyer.

He has brought significant changes in the social, political, economic and security sectors during his presidential tenure in the United States of America. But despite such honours and success, he is always a down to earth person and has high self-esteem. He possesses many good qualities, including the dignity of labour. We should all have a clear picture of his life to achieve big things in life, but at the same time, be sober. He was elected from the Democratic Party of the United States if America. He was married to Michelle Obama and had two daughters.

10 Lines on Barack Obama in English

• We all know that Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States of America.
• He was from the Democratic party of the United States.
• He was a powerful man with high and broad intellect.
• He was the first African-African to have held the President of the United States of America.
• Obama was elected to the state senate of Illinois in 1996 and continued there for about eight years.
• He was a knowledgeable person who studied at Columbia University and Harvard Law School.
• Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the year of 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
• He has served as a skilful President by bringing good changes in America’s security, finance, and health sectors.
• Barak Obama is married to Michelle Obama and has two daughters.
• Even being such a powerful personality, he possesses the virtues of humility.

FAQ’s on Barack Obama Essay

Question 1. What is the full name of Barack Obama?

Answer: The full name of Barrack Obama is Barrack Hussain Obama.

Question 2. When did Barrack Obama become the President of the United States of America?

Answer: Barack Obama became the President of the United States of America in 2009 and continued till 2017.

• Picture Dictionary
• English Speech
• English Slogans
• English Letter Writing
• English Essay Writing
• English Textbook Answers
• Types of Certificates
• ICSE Solutions
• Selina ICSE Solutions
• ML Aggarwal Solutions
• HSSLive Plus One
• HSSLive Plus Two
• Kerala SSLC
• Distance Education

• New Hampshire
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania
• West Virginia
• Online hoaxes
• Coronavirus
• Health Care
• Immigration
• Environment
• Foreign Policy
• Kamala Harris
• Donald Trump
• Mitch McConnell
• Hakeem Jeffries
• Ron DeSantis
• Tucker Carlson
• Sean Hannity
• Rachel Maddow
• PolitiFact Videos
• 2024 Elections
• Mostly True
• Mostly False
• Pants on Fire
• Biden Promise Tracker
• Trump-O-Meter
• Latest Promises
• Our Process
• Who pays for PolitiFact?
• Advertise with Us
• Suggest a Fact-check
• Corrections and Updates
• Newsletters

Stand up for the facts!

Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. We need your help.

I would like to contribute

• Candidate Biography
• Legal Issues

Obama's Columbia 'thesis' is all fiction, dreamed up by blogger

When we last spoke with Matthew Avitabile, a grad student in upstate New York who writes a blog called Jumping in Pools, he had stirred up a hornet's nest with a satirical posting that claimed President Barack Obama wanted soldiers to stop taking an oath to the Constitution and instead pledge their loyalty to the president himself. That put some conservative bloggers into a tizzy. "Good g*d — Obama is an egomaniac like we've never seen before. Another Hitler on the rise. This guy is just trashing everything the Consitution stands for," wrote someone named Kitty on the blog Tree of Liberty. The report kept spreading, getting picked up by other bloggers and circulating as a chain e-mail. It earned a Pants on Fire from our Truth-O-Meter. Avitabile, a 22-year-old State University of New York at Albany grad student and self-described moderate Republican, told us back in February that he was surprised the posting — which was labeled satire — could spread so quickly without people verifying the facts. "People wanted to believe this about the president so bad, that he would really go toward a dictatorship so much, that they would go with it without checking it," he said. Now comes another satirical claim from Avitabile's blog that made it all the way to Rush Limbaugh's show before being debunked. It says that Obama criticized "plutocratic thugs" in his thesis at Columbia University: "Obama was required to write a 'senior seminar' paper in order to graduate from Columbia. The subject of this paper, which totaled 44 pages, was American government. Entitled Aristocracy Reborn, this paper chronicled the long struggle of the working class against, as Obama put it, 'plutocratic thugs with one hand on the money and the other on the government.' "In the paper, in which only the first ten pages were given to the general media, Obama decries the plight of the poor: 'I see poverty in every place I walk. In Los Angeles and New York, the poor reach to me with bleary eyes and all I can do is sigh.' "In part, the future President blames this on the current economic system: 'There are many who will defend the 'free market.' But who will defend the single mother of four working three jobs. When a system is allowed to be free at the expense of its citizens, then it is tyranny.' "However, the President also singled out the American Constitution: '... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.' "It is yet unknown if more of this thesis will be released. It was also noted that the President received an A- for the paper, which later led to his graduation." The blog posting gained credibility because the "satire" label was small and easy to miss, and it falsely claimed that Time magazine columnist Joe Klein uncovered the thesis. "With all of the secrecy regarding the President's academic record," the blogger wrote, "famed Time reporter Joe Klein looked into the records for an upcoming special edition about the President. Klein included several key points in the piece, including his grades and stellar letters of recommendation. However, what has leaked along with this information was the subject of a thesis written by the young Obama while still an undergraduate at Columbia." Avitabile said he intended the item to be satire, but not over-the-top-obvious satire. "If you have to explain a joke, it's not funny," he said. "I kind of get inspiration from Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. You want people to be let in and then at the end, they realize it, and either find it funny on its own terms or find their reaction to be funny." The satire was too subtle for many people, though. The item appeared to go unnoticed for weeks. Then, on Oct. 21, 2009, Michael Ledeen of Pajamas Media, a political blog, wrote about Obama's alleged thesis: "That’s quite an indictment, even for an Ivy League undergraduate. I wonder if the prof – and I’d like to know who the prof was – made an appropriate marginal comment, something about historical context, about the Constitution’s revolutionary status in the history of freedom, and about the separation of powers in order to make the creation of any 'shackles' as difficult as possible." Just two days later, on Oct. 23, Rush Limbaugh cited it it in a sharp attack on Obama. "The Constitution is the most liberty-promoting and freedom-acknowledging document in the history of the world, and this little boy in college is writing about it with utter disdain, and he still shares those feelings," Limbaugh told listeners. He added, "So Joe Klein at Time magazine has known for a long time about Obama's college thesis when he was at Columbia. Why didn't this come out a year ago at this time? Why didn't this come out before the election in November?" Within minutes, though, the story began falling apart. While he was still on air, Limbaugh received notice from a listener who was skeptical of the thesis story and found nothing to back it up. So the host began to backtrack. "I'm also told that the blog containing the passage on Obama's thesis is a satire blog," he said later in the same show. "So I shout from the mountaintops, 'It was satire!' But we know [Obama] thinks it. Good comedy, to be comedy, must contain an element of truth, and we know how he feels about distribution of wealth. He's mad at the courts for not going far enough on it. So we stand by the fabricated quote because we know Obama thinks it anyway. That's how it works in the media today." Klein later confirmed on Time's Swampland blog that he had "never seen Obama's thesis," and other bloggers followed with contrite apologies. "I should have picked up some hint, but I didn’t," Ledeen posted on Oct. 23. "Shame on me." Meredith Jessup of TownHall.com followed suit the same day, but she added, "it's important to note that none of this nonsense would be running wild around the Internet if the campaign had just released Obama's thesis in the first place." Which might be a fair question – if there had been a thesis at all. But there wasn't. A Columbia University spokesman told PolitiFact that "an undergraduate thesis requirement for those in political science did not even exist at Columbia in 1983." In other words, Obama couldn't have written a thesis because no Columbia political science student in his era did. Yet the conviction that a thesis is out there has driven critics to search everywhere for it. The elusive Obama "thesis," it seems, stems from in an inadvertent slip of the tongue by one of Obama's former professors. In 2007, when Obama was serving in the Senate and gearing up for the first presidential primaries and caucuses, New York Times reporter Janny Scott assembled a story about Obama's years in New York, including his time as an undergraduate at Columbia. She managed to track down Michael Baron, who had taught a senior seminar on international politics and American policy for eight students, including Obama, in 1983. Baron, now a digital media executive for a Sarasota-based company, mistakenly used the term "thesis" when he spoke with the New York Times reporter, which sent reporters scurrying to find it. "Journalists began hounding Columbia University for copies of the musty document," wrote Jim Popkin, an NBC News senior investigative producer in a July 2008 blog posting. "Conservative bloggers began wondering if the young Obama had written a no-nukes screed that he might come to regret. And David Bossie, the former congressional investigator and 'right-wing hit man,' as one newspaper described him, took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University’s newspaper and the Chicago Tribune in March searching for the term paper." But Obama's paper was nowhere to be found. While the paper was the fruit of a yearlong course, it's not something the university would have saved. "It was not like a master's or doctoral thesis that gets collected and put on microfiche," Baron told PolitiFact. Baron, who donated to Obama's campaign, ultimately received about two dozen calls from journalists, some from as far away as Japan and Europe, about the missing "thesis." The former professor insists that there was nothing damaging in the 25- to 40-page paper on nuclear disarmament, which earned Obama an A, and certainly nothing about shortcomings of the Constitution or the distribution of wealth, as the blog post indicated. "The students did not write papers about a policy being good or bad," Baron said. "It was about decisionmaking — who should be listened to and how to avoid narrow thinking." Avitabile, asked whether he would continue to publish satire on his site, gave an unequivocal yes. And he urged readers of all blogs to be vigilant. "I encourage anyone who's on the Internet, make sure it's linked to an accredited news source," he said. "If you do pass it along, you should say, 'This is probably fake, but this says the president is a lizard." So once again, satire from Jumping in Pools has triggered an avalanche of unwarranted outrage. And so for the many bloggers who spread the incorrect information, we set the meter ablaze – Pants on Fire. And check your facts next time, okay?

Featured Fact-check

Read About Our Process

The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter

Our Sources

"Brian Lancaster" (pseudonym for Matthew Avitabile), "Obama College Thesis: 'Constitution is Inherently Flawed" (blog post at Jumping in Pools), Aug. 25, 2009 Michael Ledeen, "Obama and the Constitution; He Has His Doubts" (blog post at Pajamas Media), Oct. 21, 2009

Michael Ledeen, "The Obama 'thesis' hoax" (blog post at Pajamas Media), Oct. 23, 2009,

Rush Limbaugh, "Obama's Disdain for Constitution: We Know He Thinks It, Don't We?" (transcript of radio show), Oct. 23, 2009 Joe Klein, "Nonsense" (blog post at Swampland), Oct. 23, 2009 Meredith Jessup, " Obama Thesis = Communist Manifesto, Part Deux " (blog post at TownHall.com), Oct. 23, 2009 Meredith Jessup, "Obama's 'Uncovered' Thesis a Hoax" (blog post at TownHall.com), Oct. 23, 2009 Carol Platt Liebau, "Is the Joke on the President?" (blog post at TownHall.com), Oct. 25, 2009 Jim Popkin, post at MSNBC's Deep Background blog , July 24, 2008, Janny Scott, "Obama's Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say," New York Times, Oct. 30, 2007, accessed via Nexis Village Voice, "Fake But Accurate: Obama 'Thesis' Proves His Treason Even After It's Debunked," Oct. 26, 2009 New York Daily News, "Limbaugh falls for Obama thesis hoax - but is in no Rush to apologize," Oct. 25, 2009 Interview with Michael Baron, former professor of Barack Obama, Oct. 26, 2009 Interview with Matthew Avitabile, blogger at Jumping in Pools, Oct. 26, 2009

Browse the Truth-O-Meter

More by louis jacobson.

Obama's Columbia 'thesis' is all fiction, dreamed up by blogger

Support independent fact-checking. Become a member!

Michelle Obama’s College Experience Is All Too Familiar for Minority Students

“Princeton was extremely white and very male. There was no avoiding the facts.”

Michelle Robinson didn’t shy away from her background in her application essay for Princeton University. The Chicago native wrote about the lack of college degrees in her family, and her father’s struggle with multiple sclerosis. While she was in the top 10 percent of her high-school class, a member of the National Honor Society, and the class treasurer—not to mention that her older brother was already enrolled there—she was far from a shoo-in at the Ivy League university. Less than 8 percent of the undergraduate students at Princeton were black, and it wasn’t exactly known as a mecca for low-income students. But her essay worked, and in the fall of 1981, she left Chicago for Princeton, New Jersey.

Of course, Robinson would go on to marry Barack Obama and serve as the first lady for eight years. In Becoming , her newly released memoir, she reflects on her experiences in high school and college. Just as her college essay embraced her background, so too does Becoming. And beyond revealing her own story, Michelle Obama’s tales of applying to and enrolling in Princeton are emblematic of an all-too-common narrative for low-income and minority students, particularly those at elite institutions.

Read: The uncommon, requisite resolve of Michelle Obama

Obama arrived on campus earlier than most other students. She had been identified as a good candidate for a three-week orientation program “meant to close a ‘preparation gap’” for certain incoming freshmen—specifically, low-income and minority students. But there are some things even a head start can’t prepare students for. “Princeton was extremely white and very male. There was no avoiding the facts,” she writes. “If during the orientation program we’d begun to feel some ownership of the space, we were now a glaring anomaly—poppy seeds in a bowl of rice.”

That is a shared sentiment among students of color on selective college campuses today. In 2015, Tavaris Sanders, a black student at Connecticut College, put the sentiment bluntly: “I’m always segregated in classes. I’m like the only black male in there, always, usually, most of the time,” he wrote. “I don’t belong here at all.”

Read: The missing black students at elite American universities

But there are often places of refuge for minority students, and Obama found hers at Princeton’s so-called Third World Center. As she writes, it “quickly became a kind of home base for me. It hosted parties and co-op meals. There were volunteer tutors to help with homework and spaces just to hang out.”

There she found students like herself, who had arrived on campus unaware of their disadvantages relative to their classmates. They weren’t afforded the privilege of SAT prep or AP classes in high school. They hadn’t attended boarding school, and so often weren’t as comfortable with being away from home. “It was like stepping onstage at your first piano recital and realizing that you’d never played anything but an instrument with broken keys,” she writes. So, to adapt and overcome, she leaned on a community that was experiencing the same struggles she was.

The administrators, though, probably weren’t too fond of this setup, she says—with the majority of the minority students hanging out with one another. The university was after campus diversity—the compelling governmental interest that had been outlined in a Supreme Court decision just a few years earlier. As Obama puts it, “The ideal would be to achieve something resembling what’s often shown on college brochures—smiling students working and socializing in neat, ethnically blended groups.”

But the dynamics on campus never quite resembled the glossy brochure images. “Even today,” Obama writes, “with white students continuing to outnumber students of color on college campuses, the burden of assimilation is put largely on the shoulders of minority students.” And in her experience, she writes, “it’s a lot to ask.”

For black students such as Obama, affirmative action was a constant elephant in the room, she writes. Though they knew they were qualified, “you could almost read the scrutiny in the gaze of certain students and even professors,” she writes. And the practice of affirmative action recently received a renewed wave of scrutiny as Harvard University, where Obama’s daughter Malia is now a sophomore, is being sued for allegedly discriminating against Asian American applicants.

More than three decades later, with her own undergraduate years firmly in the past, Michelle Obama’s struggles as a black student at Princeton are eerily similar to the experiences of students today. Nestled within Becoming is a long-held truth about American higher education: Supporting students—particularly low-income and minority students—once they’re on campus matters at least as much as getting them there in the first place.

About the Author

More Stories

The Long Simmer of Political Violence in America

How the Biden Administration Messed Up FAFSA

Fact check: An Obama law school essay makes only brief reference to Trump

The claim: barack obama once said donald trump was an example of the american dream.

Few presidents have as fraught of a relationship with their successor as former President Barack Obama does with President Donald Trump. The contrast between the two often draws exaggeration and misinformation.

"The American Dream is to be Donald Trump," a graphic image  claiming to quote the former president reads. USA TODAY has reached out to the Facebook user who posted the claim.

Similar claims have circulated since at least 2017 , each claiming that Obama, during his time in law school, referred to Trump as an example of the American dream.

Analysis: Obama, Trump brawl breaks with history

There is no evidence that Obama said that line exactly, though the former president did make reference to his successor in an unpublished essay he co-authored while at Harvard Law School.

Fact check: Viral quote about helping poor often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln

The essay quickly mentions Trump

Obama has been a prolific author, even during his time as the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review . He co-authored "Race and Rights Rhetoric," with law school classmate Robert Fisher.

More: Michelle Obama says Trump is 'wrong president for our country' in DNC speech

David J. Garrow's 2017 biography of Obama , " Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama ," touched on how the duo's essay cited Trump as a kind of unattainable level of wealth and success that the average American nonetheless believed was within reach.

“(Americans have) a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind," Garrow's excerpt reads, according to a brief article on Complex.com . 

"The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American — I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don't make it, my children will.”

'People are not going to stop': 57 years later, thousands to gather for another March on Washington on Friday

Obama and Fisher included the reference in a broader argument about strategies for Black empowerment, arguing that a new framework for Black advancement was necessary in the decades after the civil rights movement.

"It has become increasingly apparent that the strategies rooted in the Sixties have not led blacks to the promised land of genuine political, economic and social equality," the two argued, according to PolitiFact .

"Political mobilization … ground to a halt as blacks became increasingly reliant on lawyers and professional civil rights leaders and organizations with only minimal institutional presence in local communities," the duo continued.

Obama and Fisher believed that, "Precisely because America is a racist society … we cannot realistically expect white America to make special concessions towards blacks over the long haul," according to an excerpt from VICE .

More: Obama speaks out on recent treatment of peaceful protesters at John Lewis' funeral

Based on these expanded excerpts, not only did Obama not use the line in the graphic directly, but the line misinterprets the point the essay was making. 

In a statement to Reuters , Garrow said that it is “hard to erase falsehoods from the record," referencing the misinterpretations his Obama's statements online.

“Once a falsehood gets out there on the web, it takes on an independent life as the very nature of the web discourages people from checking for reliable sources," he continued.

Fact check: Obama administration approved, built temporary holding enclosures at southern border

Our ruling: False

Barack Obama never directly said that "The American dream is to be Donald Trump." The best approximation of what the then-future president said can be found in his unpublished writings as reported by biographer David J. Garrow. In those writings, Obama references Trump in relation to the American dream but does not mean it in the traditional sense. We rate this claim FALSE because it is not supported by our research.

Our fact-check sources:

• The Harvard Crimson, Feb 6. 1990, Obama Named New Law Review President
• Complex, May 12, 2017, As a Harvard Law Student, Barack Obama Said Becoming Donald Trump Was The American Dream
• Amazon listing of "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama"
• VICE, May 12, 2017, Young Obama Said the American Dream Is to Be Donald Trump
• PolitiFact, Apr 8, 2019, Obama never said, ‘The American dream is to be Donald Trump’
• Reuters, Jun 9, 2020, Fact check: Obama misquoted as saying “the American Dream is to be Donald Trump”

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition , ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

Get the Reddit app

/r/Politics is for news and discussion about U.S. politics.

How the hell did Obama get into an Ivy League School?

By continuing, you agree to our User Agreement and acknowledge that you understand the Privacy Policy .

Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app

You’ve set up two-factor authentication for this account.

Enter a 6-digit backup code

Create your username and password.

Reddit is anonymous, so your username is what you’ll go by here. Choose wisely—because once you get a name, you can’t change it.

Reset your password

Enter your email address or username and we’ll send you a link to reset your password

Check your inbox

An email with a link to reset your password was sent to the email address associated with your account

Choose a Reddit account to continue

Rick Hess Straight Up

Education policy maven Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute think tank offers straight talk on matters of policy, politics, research, and reform. Read more from this blog.

What Obama’s Secretary of Education Thinks About Schooling Today

• Share article

Arne Duncan served as U.S. secretary of education under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2016, following a seven-year tenure as the superintendent of the Chicago public schools. During his time at the U.S. Department of Education, we often didn’t see eye to eye when it came to Race to the Top, NCLB waivers, the Common Core, college lending, and more. But these were debates over policy and principle. I understood that Duncan was doing what he thought best and I like to think he took my critiques in that same spirit. With that kind of respectful disagreement in short supply, I thought it worth reaching out to Arne to get his thoughts on what’s changed in education and what’s needed now. Today, Duncan is a managing partner at the Emerson Collective; the founder of Chicago CRED, an anti-gun violence organization he co-founded in 2016; and the chair of the board of the Hunt Institute. Here’s what he had to say.

Rick: Arne, some readers may not know much about your efforts since you served as secretary of education for President Obama. Can you talk a bit about what you’re focused on and what drew you to that work?

Arne: Since 2016, my primary focus has been on reducing gun violence in Chicago. I have helped develop and lead an organization called Chicago CRED that engages with individuals at extreme risk of shooting someone or being shot and helps give them a pathway out of the streets and into the legal economy. This very much came from a place of personal pain. As a teenager, I used to play basketball on the south and west sides, and some of the older guys would protect me and give me safe passage—and I started losing some of them to gun violence. As CEO of the Chicago public schools, I lost a student to gun violence on average every two weeks. As secretary of education, my worst day ever was Sandy Hook, and when I returned to Chicago in 2016, gun violence was worse than I had ever seen it. I just could not stand by and do nothing. Everything else felt secondary.

Rick: What’s that work involve, and what have you learned from it?

Arne: I work with hundreds of mostly young men, but also many women, to help them change their lives. Most of them grew up in street life, where guns, drugs, and the illegal economy were the only paths open for them. They never had the chance to live normally. We’re trying to give them an opportunity to thrive by supplying them with a life coach, trauma treatment, education, and job training. Throughout this work, I have learned that we have overlooked so much talent. These men and women are leaders, they are creative, and they are capable of anything.

Rick: When it comes to school safety, what kinds of solutions do you think have the most promise?

Arne: If you’re talking about the kind of mass shootings that have happened in places like Sandy Hook and Parkland, I am 100 percent in favor of laws that reduce access to guns—especially assault weapons. If you’re talking about in-school violence that mostly does not include guns, I would like to see less focus on police and more reliance on people with trust and respect who can intervene before disputes escalate. Many people who work for Chicago CRED have criminal backgrounds that prevent them from working in schools, but they have a lot to offer to young people. They understand their lives because they have lived it. They can earn their trust in ways that people who have not lived the street life never can. They can de-escalate situations brilliantly. They don’t talk down to students who are in situations similar to the ones they were in growing up. And the young people see themselves in our guys and think, if they can do it, so can I . They’re just this huge untapped resource to help reduce gun violence, but they’re not in a position to do that because of employment barriers. We need to change that.

Rick: Looking back, what’s the most important lesson you think you learned during your time in Washington as secretary of education?

Arne: Listening is an underrated skill. If you want to be helpful to people, you really have to listen to them and let them know they have been heard. Once you do that, you can have a better dialogue. The experience also affirmed that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I knew this as a district leader in Chicago, but traveling around the country and seeing schools all across America reinforced it. The job is not about telling people what to do. It’s about giving them the support and opportunity to succeed.

Rick: I’m curious if there’s a time or issue during your tenure as secretary where you wish you could’ve had a do-over?

Arne: I think the teacher-evaluation issue was one that I had hoped we could make more progress on, but teachers just felt beaten up over it. We had the union leaders on board, but they couldn’t convince their members that this would help them and strengthen their profession.

Rick: What do you think people get wrong about Obama’s education record?

Arne: There’s a false narrative that we forced change upon states and districts, but we really didn’t. We were more about carrots than sticks. We tried to change the incentive structure to do the right thing—raise standards, provide some educational options to people, strengthen the teaching profession, and turn around struggling schools.

Rick: What do you make of the education landscape today?

Arne: The landscape is mixed. Reform has taken a backseat in the COVID era, and now, we’re just trying to catch up. With the COVID-relief funds drying up, there are new fiscal challenges for school districts and states. I’d like to see us shift our focus onto things like expanded early learning, high school rigor, and postsecondary access. I’d like to see us foster more tolerance and lessen tension over issues like race, gender, and academic freedom.

Rick: You mention “high school rigor,” which is something that gets less attention than it deserves. What do you have in mind?

Arne: More AP classes. More opportunities for college-level courses. More postsecondary training. Basically, our education system ought to respond to the students and what they are asking for—and what they’re ready for. Many of them are ready for a bigger challenge even in high school. It may sound radical, but an education system ought to help every student go as far as they can and as far as they want. Most schools aren’t built like that.

Rick: During your tenure in Washington, you had some well-publicized tensions with the teachers’ unions. What do you think of the role the unions are playing today?

Arne: At best, unions are effective advocates for teaching and learning. I don’t see them standing in the way of change today, but I also don’t see a lot of people trying to drive change. Instead, school systems are just trying to keep their heads above water—and it’s hard to drive change in that environment.

Rick: Your point here about leaders “just trying to keep their heads above water” reminds me of a discussion you and I had last year about a dearth of leadership in education today. What could change that?

Arne: I think the issue will come back around again. Someone will issue a new report showing that we are still at risk of falling behind in the technology race or something else. The large segment of silent parents who are not interested in the culture wars but just want their kids to get a good education will find a new voice. It’s inevitable that some great new learning approaches will emerge, and people will start asking, why can’t all kids have that? I have faith that people will demand more of their schools.

Rick: What are the biggest changes you see since your time as secretary?

Arne: Enrollment declines in some big cities like my hometown of Chicago have real consequences. It seems that some parents are giving up on the system. Also, it’s less of a front-burner issue than it was when I was in Washington. Another shift is the emergence of culture wars, which are distracting and counterproductive. There’s a difference between education as a voting issue and education as a political football. It should unite us—not divide us.

Rick: Obviously, there are lots of clickbait culture warriors. But there are also more serious figures on left and right who’d argue that these cultural debates aren’t a distraction but a reflection of fundamental tensions. What’s your take for those navigating all this?

Arne: Parents and teachers can have an honest discussion about when and how to introduce a topic like sex education into schools, but when it devolves into banning books by Toni Morrison or To Kill a Mockingbird , it seems we have lost sight of the goal—to show our children the truth about ourselves and our history. Schools should be safe places for everyone—regardless of race, gender identity, immigrant status, etc.

Rick: Is it still possible for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground on education?

Arne: As chair of the Hunt Institute, I work closely with the former Republican governor of New Mexico, Susana Martinez. In addition, I have always gotten along with my predecessor as education secretary, Margaret Spellings. I have always worked closely with governors on both sides of the aisle. It’s the culture warriors who want to do things like ban books who are driving us apart. But most of that is hype. I have a lot of faith in parents and teachers to stand up to the extremists when it comes to the education of their children.

Rick: OK, last question. As you and I’ve discussed before, it feels like civic leaders and public officials are less focused on school improvement than they were a decade ago. What do you think it will take for that dynamic to change?

Arne: The truth always helps. Let’s just get back to telling the truth about our kids and our schools—the progress, the outcomes, the good, the bad, and the ugly—and trust that people will get beyond their differences and do the right thing for their kids.

The opinions expressed in Rick Hess Straight Up are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

Sign Up for EdWeek Update

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In