Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  6. Serge F. Kovaleski, “Old Friends Say Drugs Played Only Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life,” NYT, 9 February 2008, p. A1; Sharon Cohen (AP), “Barack Obama: Finding Common Bonds in Different Worlds,” 3 June 2008; Chidanand Rajghatta, “McCain vs. Obama: Who’s Better for India?,” Times of India, 8 June 2008; Andrea Brown, “To Couple, He’s Barry in a Leather Jacket,” Colorado Springs Gazette, 20 January 2009; DJG interview with Alice Dewey; Barack Hussein Obama, Selective Service Registration Form, 29 July 1980, FOIA; Maya Soetoro 1979–1984 Passport, Obama Family Papers; Stanley Ann Soetoro v. Lolo Soetoro, “Complaint for Divorce” and “Information Concerning Conciliation and Child Care,” both 15 June 1980, and “Decree,” 5 November 1980, Hawaii First Circuit Family Court #117619; Obama, DFMF, pp. 87–91; Maraniss, BOTS, pp. 317, 362, 382; Frank Marshall Davis to Margaret Burroughs, 27 October 1982, Burroughs Papers. Obama believes that his grandparents’ argument occurred while he was still in high school, but the balance of evidence suggests otherwise. Also see Bob Owens, “Did Obama Actually Register for Selective Service?,” PajamasMedia.com, 12 August 2008 (quoting the Selective Service System as stating that Obama’s registration number was 61-112559-1). Years later one news story would have Obama working “to sell island trinkets in a gift shop” and “making sandwiches” at a deli in Honolulu that summer, but the story contains other obvious errors and attributes its information to campaign staffers, not Obama. Sweet, “The Obama We Don’t Know,” CST, 19 July 2008. Sometime in 1980, Ann completed work on a monograph entitled Women’s Work in Village Industries on Java, a 157-page volume published in Jakarta that no more than half a dozen libraries around the world would catalog and retain.

  7. Occidental College 1980–81 Catalog; DJG interviews with Hasan Chandoo, Asad Jumabhoy, Margot Mifflin, Dina Silva, Caroline Boss, Tom Grauman, Larry Hogue, Paul Carpenter, Bill Snider, Sim Heninger, Eric Moore, Chris Welton, and Paul Herrmannfeldt; Welton, “Yes He Can,” January 2009 (e-mailed to DJG 14 May 2014); Mifflin e-mails to DJG, 2 April 2013 and 22 November 2014; Caroline Boss and Larry Hogue, “Socialists,” TO, 3 October 1980, p. 2; Debbie Rush, “Women’s Hockey Doing Well,” TO, 10 October 1980, p. 9; Seth Borenstein (AP), “Obama to Boldly Go Where No Geek Has Gone Before,” 24 December 2008; Boss in Remnick, The Bridge, p. 109; Jonathan Alter, The Promise (Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 179; Larry Wilson, “When Barry Obama, Oxy Student, Lived in Pasadena,” Pasadena Star-News, 10 November 2015. In perhaps his most direct subsequent acknowledgment, Obama would state, “I did all my drinking in high school and college. I was a wild man. I did drugs and drank and partied.” Amanda Griscom Little, “Barack Obama,” Rolling Stone, 30 December 2004, p. 88. See also “Barack Obama Revealed,” CNN, 20 August 2008 (“My first two years of college, I was continuing some bad habits from high school”).

  8. Cindy Zedalis, “Faculty Tables Divestment Resolution,” “Divestiture” editorial, and Todd Gold, “Richard Gilman: Interview,” TO, 17 October 1980, pp. 1, 2, 4–6; “Activate” editorial, TO, 24 October 1980, p. 2; Dan McCormac, “Student Coalition Is Revived to Fight Apartheid,” and “South Africa,” TO, 31 October 1980, pp. 21, 24; Anne Ball, “SCC Encourages Ethnic Awareness,” and Diana Takata, “U.S. Multinationals Bankroll Racism,” TO, 7 November 1980, pp. 1, 3; Debbie Levi, “Morality Above and Beyond Financial Concerns,” TO, 14 November 1980, p. 5; Lee Cauble, “College Council Discusses Club Sports, Apartheid Speakers,” and “S. African Teach-In,” TO, 21 November 1980, pp. 15, 16; Anthony Russo, “Faculty Demands Divestment Action,” Arpie Balekjian, “Speaker Cleaves to Corporations,” Julie Evans, “Opinions Differ on Apartheid Issue,” and Debbie Levi, “Namibian People’s War on Apartheid,” TO, 5 December 1980, pp. 1, 4; DJG interviews with Caroline Boss, Larry Hogue, Andy Roth, Dario Longhi, Eric Moore, Asad Jumabhoy, Hasan Chandoo, Margot Mifflin, Bill Snider, and Paul Carpenter, “Crossroads Africa,” TO, 8 February 1980, p. 8; TO, 3 October 1980, p. 11; Obama in Richard Wolffe et al., “When Barry Became Barack,” Newsweek, 31 March 2008, pp. 24ff.; Wolffe, Renegade, pp. 31–32; Huell Howser, “Barack Obama’s Days at Occidental,” KCET TV, 25 November 2008; Sharkey, “Friends of Barry,” Occidental Magazine, Winter 2009, p. 13; Jim Schlosser, “Downtown Baker Knew Obama Way Back When,” Greensboro News & Record, 19 April 2010; Eric Moore interview with Jim Gilmore.

  9. DJG interviews with Caroline Boss, Hasan Chandoo, John Drew, Tom Grauman, Roger Boesche, and Andy Roth; Sohale Siddiqi interview with Jim Gilmore; Drew’s 1979 Occidental College transcript, Boss to Drew, 24 January 1980, Drew to Erik V., 10 April 1980, Drew Papers. Drew’s recollections of Barack and Hasan’s visit to Caroline’s family home are best read in chronological order, particularly in light of the conclusions of Herbert L. Packer, Ex-Communist Witnesses: Four Studies in Fact Finding (Stanford University Press, 1962). John C. Drew, “Face-to-Face with Young Marxist Obama: Remembering My Days as an Anti-Apartheid Student Activist,” AnonymousPoliticalScientist.blogspot.com, 18 November 2009, updated on 7 February 2010, the same date as a 59-second Youtube video; Ronald Kessler, “Obama Espoused Radical Views in College,” Newsmax.com, 8 February 2010; Drew, “Was Obama a Committed Marxist in College?,” Breitbart.TV, 12 February 2010; Drew, “Glorious Leader Gap,” AnonymousPoliticalScientist.blogspot.com, 5 July 2010; Drew, “Obama at Occidental,” DirectorBlue.blogspot.com, 23 October 2010; Paul Kengor, “Obama’s ‘Missing Link,’” American Thinker, 10 December 2010; Drew, “Meeting Young Obama,” American Thinker, 24 February 2011; Drew, “Even Republicans Rejected Info About Obama’s Past,” American Thinker, 14 September 2011; Drew, “My White Girlfriend Inspired Obama’s Big, Dark Regina in Dreams From My Father,” American Thinker, 17 July 2012; Jamie Glazov, “Young Obama’s Dreams of a Communist Revolution in America,” FrontPage Magazine, 8 August 2012 (quoting Drew as acknowledging “I only remember bits and fragments of the actual conversation”); Kengor, The Communist, pp. 249–58; Drew, “White Like Me,” American Thinker, 27 May 2013. Fourteen years later Obama would mention having read “philosophers like Sartre and Fanon” while at Oxy. “Community Revitalization,” Nebraska Wesleyan University Forum, 9 September 1994, Lincoln, NE. Contrary to one published conclusion of Drew’s, Roger Boesche’s gradebooks indicate Obama was not in his fall term 1980 PS 132 II. In line with Packer’s analysis, Drew in “Glorious Leader Gap” would come to further recall that Obama had seemed “strikingly effeminate.” On Hamid and Obama’s road trip, see Wolffe, Renegade, p. 238; on New Year’s Eve see Maraniss, BOTS, p. 367.

  10. Occidental College 1980–81 Catalog, esp. pp. 73, 122, 158; Siddiqi interview with Gilmore; DJG interviews with Anne Howells, David James, Margot Mifflin, Mark Dery, Bill Snider, Larry Hogue, Alex McNear, Roger Boesche, Ken Sulzer, John Boyer, Caroline Boss, Tom Grauman, and Asad Jumabhoy; Mark Dery, “Dancing with Words,” Occidental Magazine, Fall 2005, p. 56 (memorializing Jensvold, who died in an accidental fall in June 2005 at age fifty-one); David Mendell, Obama: From Promise to Power (Amistad, 2007), pp. 60–62; Larry Gordon, “Occidental Recalls ‘Barry’ Obama,” LAT, 29 January 2007; John Schwada, “A Look at Barack Obama’s Time at Occidental College,” FoxLA11, 25 February 2008; Boesche in Wolffe et al., “When Barry Became Barack,” Newsweek, 31 March 2008, pp. 24ff.; Oliver Haydock, “Meet Roger Boesche, Who Knew ‘Barry Obama’ in Passing at Occidental,” New York Observer, 3 April 2008; Howser, “Barack Obama’s Occidental College Days,” California Gold, KCET, 13 November 2008; Kearn and Lewis, “Retracing Obama’s Legacy,” Occidental Weekly, 25 November 2008; Slack, “Obama at Occidental,” Verdugo Monthly, January 2009, pp. 15–16; Sharkey, “Friends of Barry,” p. 15; Gordon, “An Early Influence,” LAT, 18 January 2009; Jeremy Oberstein, “Obama’s Ascent to the Top,” Glendale News Press, 20 January 2009; Gordon, “Obama’s Oxy Professor Learns the President Has a Long Memory,” LAT, 15 August 2009; Gabriel Bernadett-Shapiro, “Boesche Makes a White House Call,” Occidental Weekly, 23 September 2009; “12 Minutes with Obama,” Occidental Magazine, Fall 2009; Margot Mifflin, “Obama at Occident
al,” NewYorker.com, 3 October 2012; Eric Krol, “Students Put Candidates on the Spot,” CDH, 30 September 2004, p. 10; Obama on The Friday Night Show, WTTW.com, 3 December 2004; Obama in Barkley, Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? pp. 23–24; Obama on 20/20, ABC, 26 September 2008.

  11. Anne Ball, “Students Lack Interest on Draft Issue,” Ball, “SCC Supports Faculty,” Arpie Balekjian, “Gregory Captivates and Keeps Large Audience,” Anthony Russo, “Forum Explores Prejudices,” and “African Speaker,” TO, 16 January 1981, pp. 1, 13, 14, 16; “Calendar of Events,” LAT, 15 January 1981, p. WS17; “Bread Not Bombs Martin Luther King Vigil” flyer, 17 January 1981, McNear Papers; Henry Weinstein and Erwin Baker, “S. Africa to Move Consulate to L.A.,” LAT, 22 February 1980, p. C5; 6 October 1980 flyer in the Carol B. Thompson and Bud Day Papers, Michigan State University Archives; “Protest Staged Against South African Consulate,” LAT, 7 October 1980, p. B19; “The Land of the Free (Trips),” LAT, 5 October 1980, p. F4; Carol B. Thompson, “Land of the Free (Trips),” LAT, 11 October 1980, p. C3; John L. Mitchell, “South African Consul Sits Tight in B.H. Office,” LAT, 30 October 1980, pp. 1, 15; “The Southland,” LAT, 18 January 1981, p. A2; Anthony Russo, “Speaker, Film Denote Tragedy of Apartheid,” TO, 23 January 1981, pp. 1, 5; Obama in Barkley, Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? p. 28; Stewart Ikeda and Alexia Robinson, “U.S. Senator Barack Obama on Black Student Politics,” Black Collegian, 1st Semester 2006, pp. 48–51 (but misdating it to his freshman rather than sophomore year at Oxy); “Tim Ngubeni: The Bringer of Hope,” YouTube, 11 June 2007 (two parts); DJG interviews with Hasan Chandoo, Caroline Boss, Alex McNear, Eric Moore, and Paul Anderson. A Chandoo letter in TO, 30 January 1981, p. 12, voiced a fear that Pakistan “may be the next underdeveloped country which becomes an annihilated sideshow to the super power hegemonic games.” On the Gathering, see Janet Clayton and John L. Mitchell, “Black Ministers in Political Move,” LAT, 7 May 1979, pp. 1, 26–28, and Sandy Banks, “Watts: Many Churches But How Helpful?,” LAT, 19 August 1980, pp. 1, 14–15.

  12. Debbie Levi, “Minority Recruitment Decline Reflects Priorities,” TO, 23 January 1981 [I], p. 1, and 30 January 1981 [II], p. 1; Dan Karasic, “MEC Will Receive Tentative Funding,” TO, 30 January 1981, p. 1; Third World Voice 1, #1, January 1981 (date stamped 21 January), Occidental College Archives; Anne Ball, “SCC Supports Faculty,” TO, 16 January 1981, p. 1; “Divestiture,” TO, 30 January 1981, p. 16; Michael Abelson, “SCC Discusses Budget, Divestment at Meeting,” and “Gay Awareness Week,” TO, 6 February 1981, p. 1; Larry Hogue to Alex McNear, 7 February 1981, McNear Papers; Occidental Alumni Magazine, Spring 1981, p. 37; Debbie Levi, “Gays Present Alternative Lifestyle,” TO, 13 February 1981, pp. 1, 11, 16; “Rally,” TO, 13 February 1981, p. 2; DJG interviews with Hasan Chandoo, Caroline Boss, and Chris Welton (“the three of us went there and heckled”); Obama himself is uncertain as to whether he joined in the heckling.

  13. Anthony Russo, “Students Demand Divestment,” TO, 20 February 1981, pp. 1, 11; “Divestment,” TO, 20 February 1981, p. 2; “Strictly Opinion” and Brad Weber and Lupe Nolasco, “Affirmative Action and Divestiture,” TO, 27 February 1981, pp. 4, 12; La Encina 1981, pp. 137, 185; Obama, DFMF, pp. 105–7; Rivera in Margaret Talev, “For Obama, a Tale of Two Speeches,” KRDC McClatchy, 16 November 2007, and in Helman, “Small College Awakened Future Senator to Service,” BG, 25 August 2008, p. A1; Mifflin in “Obama as We Knew Him,” Observer, 26 October 2008, pp. 4–7; Mifflin, “The Occidental Tourist,” NYT, 18 January 2009, p. IV–14; Mifflin, “Obama at Occidental,” NewYorker.com, 3 October 2012; Chris Welton, “Yes He Can,” January 2009, and Welton, “That Troublemaker Barry Obama,” Financial Times, 7 May 2014, p. 8; DJG interviews with Caroline Boss, Tom Grauman, Hasan Chandoo, Chris Welton, Rebecca Rivera, Margot Mifflin, Eric Moore, Amiekoleh Usafi, Sim Heninger, Paul Carpenter, Larry Hogue, and Tom Moyes. On Sarah-Etta Harris, see Tom Hammitt, “ASOC Schedules Minority Recruitment Day for March,” TO, 16 February 1979, p. 1 (“From what I’ve seen in my three years here, Occidental couldn’t give a damn if it returned to all Anglo”), “Richter Fellowship Recipients Announced,” TO, 22 February 1980, p. 10, and “Possibilities & Realities,” 1981–1982, p. 64, Occidental College Archives. Justin A. Frank’s characterization of the rally as “in retrospect, a crucial juncture in the history of our nation” is too hilarious not to quote. Obama on the Couch (Free Press, 2011), p. 99.

  14. DJG interviews with Hasan Chandoo, Caroline Boss, Tom Grauman, and Barack Obama; Obama, DFMF, pp. 103–4, 107–12, 116; Obama, “Community Revitalization,” Nebraska Wesleyan University Forum, 9 September 1994, Lincoln, NE; Obama, Northwestern University Commencement Address, 16 June 2006; Obama interview with Katie Couric, CBS Evening News, 5 December 2007; Obama, “A New Era of Service,” University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 2 July 2008; Obama on 20/20, ABC, 26 September 2008; “Possibilities & Realities,” 1981–82, p. 64, Occidental College Archives. Regarding abandonment, one psychologist would later assert that “abandonment was the primary issue of Barry’s life.” Avner Falk, The Riddle of Barack Obama (Praeger, 2010), p. 84. Years later, and well prior to any public suggestion that “Regina” was based upon Boss, John Drew would reflect on that passage in DFMF and observe “that really sounds like Caroline.” DJG interview with Drew, 14 December 2011. In an interesting chronological coincidence, the Oxy newspaper would report that following an excessive night of partying on Friday, February 20, as part of a student event called “Da Getaway,” a special allocation of student government funds was necessary to pay four people for “removing trash, mopping floors, etc.,” as part of “the cleanup of several dorms.” Alan Tong, “SCC Allocates Funds for ‘Getaway’ Workers,” TO, 6 March 1981, p. 11. Oxy employed thirty-seven unionized housekeepers, who worked—rather unhappily—thirty hours per week at an hourly wage of $3.87. See “Support,” TO, 29 May 1981, p. 2, a letter to the editor from twelve students noting that “unfortunately most people take them for granted.”

  15. Karla Olson, “Rising Above Oxy Through Columbia,” TO, 20 February 1981, p. 5; DJG interviews with Eric Moore, Phil Boerner, Anne Howells, Romelle Rowe Ecung, Hasan Chandoo, Asad Jumabhoy, Caroline Boss, Alex McNear, Sim Heninger, Bill Snider, and Paul Carpenter; Boerner in Sharkey, “Friends of Barry,” p. 16; Howells in Gordon, “Occidental Recalls ‘Barry’ Obama,” in Kovaleski, “Old Friends Say Drugs Played Only a Bit Part,” and in Mary Anne Ostrom, “Democrats Get Down to Business,” San Jose Mercury News, 25 August 2008; Obama in Tammerlin Drummond, “Barack Obama’s Law,” LAT, 12 March 1990, pp. E1, E2; Obama, DFMF, pp. 115–16 (erroneously imagining “a transfer program that Occidental had arranged with Columbia”); Obama in Gordon, “Occidental Recalls”; Obama’s 2001 interview with Julieanna Richardson (“a lot of my friends . . . had graduated, so I transferred”); Obama in Pete Hisey, “Center Stage,” Occidental Magazine, Fall 2004, pp. 24–29 (“I really wanted to see New York”); Obama, Q&A at My Brother’s Keep Townhall, 21 July 2014, YouTube.com; Obama in Wolffe, “When Barry Became Barack”; “Barack Obama Revealed,” CNN, 20 August 2008; Chris Welton, “Yes He Can,” January 2009; Snider in Jim Schlosser, “Downtown Baker Knew Obama Way Back When,” Greensboro News & Record, 19 April 2010; Phil Boerner to grandparents, 24 March 1981, Boerner Papers (mentioning submission of transfer application to Columbia). The application deadline was April 15. Columbia University Bulletin 1981–1983, p. 32, Columbia Archives. To one early questioner, Obama would assert, “I wanted to be around more black folks in big cities.” Linda Matchan, “A Law Review Breakthrough,” BG, 15 February 1990, p. 29. Two decades later Obama would say, “I think I had a hunger to shape the world in some way, to make the world a better place, that was triggered around the time that I transferred.” Remnick, The Bridge, p. 114.

  16. DJG interviews with Paul Anderson, Alex McNear, Tom Grauman, David James, Margot Mifflin, Mark Dery, Dina Silva, and Barack Obama; Mifflin in Kevin Fagan, “Obama: Transformations,” San Francisco Chronicle, 14 September 2008, a
nd in Sharkey, “Friends of Barry”; Alex McNear and Tom Grauman, “Feast,” TO, 6 March 1981, pp. 2, 11; “Feast,” TO, 13 March 1981, p. 12; Feast, Spring 1981, esp. pp. 11–12; Michael Dobson, “New Literary Journal Puts Only the Best on Display,” TO, 22 May 1981, pp. 6–7. “Underground” was also published in classmate Mark Dery’s Plastic Laughter #2, 1981, p. 6. On Obama’s poems, also see Kevin Bacon, “Ode to Obama,” Occidental Weekly, 21 March 2007, Ian McMillan, “The Lyrical Democrat,” Guardian, 28 March 2007, Rebecca Mead, “Obama, Poet,” New Yorker, 2 July 2007, Jack Cashill, “Race, Fantasy, and the New Yorker’s Editor,” American Thinker, 30 April 2011 (someone who is cited with the greatest reluctance), Maraniss, BOTS, pp. 382–84, Kengor, The Communist, pp. 264–66. On McNear, also see Alex McNear and Wendy Clark, “SCC Lacks Initiative in Cultural Funding,” TO, 22 May 1981, pp. 3, 11.