Rising Star

by David Garrow

  32. Obama on The Friday Night Show, WTTW, 3 December 2004; Obama, TAOH, p. 205; Jeff Zeleny, “Obama Talks About Growing Up Without His Father,” NYT Caucus Blog, 3 October 2007; Obama in Kevin Merida, “The Ghost of a Father,” WP, 14 December 2007, p. A12; Obama in Purdum, “Raising Obama,” Vanity Fair, March 2008. See also Obama’s 2 October 2003 interview with David Axelrod, Chicago. Instances where Obama would incorrectly state that he did not adopt “Barack” until late 1982 include Bernard Schoenburg, “Issues of Race a Painful Part of Obama Family History,” SJR, 11 January 2004, p. 15; Obama interview with David Axelrod, 7 February 2004; and Obama on The Oprah Winfrey Show, 19 January 2005. Obama would once say that “some of my drive comes from wanting to prove that he should have stuck around,” but Barack was indeed deeply fortunate to have grown up half a world away from a man who was “little short of a monster” and “suffered from a severe narcissistic personality disorder.” “Who Is Barack Obama?,” ABC World News Tonight, 1 November 2007; Toby Harnden, “A Life of President Obama’s Father,” Telegraph, 5 August 2011; Falk, The Riddle of Barack Obama, p. 28.

  33. Siddiqi interview with Jim Gilmore; Kakugawa in Burgess, A Tale of Two Brothers, p. 94; McNear in Maraniss, BOTS, p. 455; DJG interviews with Alex McNear, Michael Schwartz, Mike Ramos, and Asad Jumabhoy; Barack Obama to Phil Boerner, 3 March 1983, and Katy Budge to Phil Boerner, 15 March 1983, Boerner Papers; Columbia University Bulletin 1981–83, pp. 2–8.

  34. Obama to Alex McNear, 10 February 1983, McNear Papers (mentioning Spanish); DJG interviews with Michael Baron, Pern Beckman, Len Davis, and Judy Clain; Columbia College, Courses of Instruction 1982–83, p. 41; Lennard J. Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (Columbia University Press, 1983), esp. pp. 157–58, 213, 221–22; Lennard J. Davis Class Recording, June 1983, Davis Papers; Lennard J. Davis, Resisting Novels: Ideology and Fiction (Methuen, 1987), esp. pp. ix, 24, 224; Davis, “Barack Obama’s Professor Gives Him Mid-Term Grades,” Huffington Post, 21 January 2010. Internal evidence makes it clear that the Davis class recording dates from early June 1983 during a summer session iteration of his seminar, and not from the spring one that had ended just four weeks earlier. Jan Hoffman, “Making Up Is Hard to Do,” Village Voice, 31 May 1983, pp. 14–18; Gary Arnold, “Film Notes,” WP, 20 May 1983, p. A25; NYT advertisement, 29 May 1983, p. H14; Newsweek, 30 May 1983, p. 96; and NYT, 3 June 1983, pp. C8, C17.

  35. Columbia College, Courses of Instruction 1982–83, pp. 34, 103; Maurice Obstfeld e-mails to DJG; Jonathan Zimmerman, “Playbooks for the White House,” CT, 30 January 2007; Thomas Vinciguerra, “Dreams From My Mater,” Columbia Magazine, Summer 2012; DJG interviews with Jonathan Zimmerman and Gregory Poe; Andrew G. Walder, Sociology W3229y, “State Socialist Societies,” Spring 1983, Poe Papers; Andrew Walder e-mails to DJG; Alex Nove, Stalinism and After, 2nd ed. (George Allen & Unwin, 1981), esp. p. 40; Timothy E. O’Connor, untitled review of Stalinism and After, 3rd ed., Studies in Soviet Thought 41 (March 1991): 157–61, esp. pp. 159 and 160; Bill Wallace, “Obituary: Professor Alex Nove,” Independent, 20 May 1994 (“when Mikhail Gorbachev raised the cry of perestroika, he seemed almost to be quoting” Nove); Elizabeth Pond, From the Yaroslavsky Station: Russia Perceived (Universe Books, 1981); John Leonard, “Review,” NYT, 6 October 1981, p. C9; Walter Goodman, NYTBR, 29 November 1981, p. 11; Susan Sherer Osnos, “Conversations on the Trans-Siberian Express,” WPBW, 27 December 1981, p. 6; Donald Bremner, “A View of Soviet Life from Siberia,” LAT, 15 July 1982, p. G36; David Lane, The End of Social Inequality? Class, Status and Power Under State Socialism (George Allen & Unwin, 1982), esp. p. 159; Ivan Szelenyi, “The End of Social Inequality,” Acta Sociologica 26 (July 1983): 313–16; T. Anthony Jones, untitled review of The End of Social Inequality? Soviet Studies 36 (January 1984): 146–47; Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (Praeger, 1957), esp. pp. 47, 213; Serge Schmemann, “Milovan Djilas, Yugoslav Critic of Communism, Dies at 83,” NYT, 21 April 1995.

  36. Obama to Alex McNear, 10 February 1983, McNear Papers; DJG interviews with McNear; Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford University Press, 1977). Twelve years later, Obama would describe his job search quite differently: “in the months leading up to my graduation, I wrote to every civil rights organization I could think of, to any black elected official in the country with a progressive agenda, to neighborhood councils and tenants rights groups. When no one wrote back, I wasn’t discouraged.” Obama, DFMF, p. 135.

  37. Obama to Boerner, 3 March 1983, Boerner Papers; Obama, “Breaking the War Mentality,” Sundial: The Weekly Newsmagazine, 10 March 1983, pp. 2–3, 5; Remnick, The Bridge, p. 117. The Sundial article was first discovered by Evan Gahr, “Young Obama Wrote Article Blaming America for ‘Growing Threat of War,’” Human Events, 9 January 2009; see also Broad and Sanger, “Obama’s Youthful Ideals Shaped the Long Arc of His Nuclear-Free Vision,” NYT, 5 July 2009.

  38. 1983 Socialist Scholars Conference, Cooper Union, 1 and 2 April 1983, Democratic Socialists of America Papers Box 81; Obama to McNear, 1 April 1983, McNear Papers; Obama, DFMF, p. 122; Stanley Kurtz, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism (Simon & Schuster, 2010), pp. 1, 25–26, 30, 62–63; Angelo M. Codevilla, “The Chosen One,” Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2011, pp. 52–58, at 58; DJG interviews with Andrew Roth and Alex McNear.

  Kurtz insists that mailing labels generated from a list of attendees who signed in at that first April 1983 conference proves that Obama also attended the second such conference, which was held April 19 through 21, 1984, and that he had the especially dangerous experience of hearing this author and the seminal, wonderful James H. Cone speak about Dr. King on Friday morning, April 20. The mailing labels list Obama’s address as 339 E. 94th Street #6A, the apartment in which he lived with Sohale up through mid-May 1983. By mid-November 1983, and continuing through April and indeed most of 1984, Obama was living at 622 W. 114th Street #43, and on April 20 he would have been at work at One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on Manhattan’s East Side. Kurtz, Radical-in-Chief, pp. 69–71.

  39. Obama to McNear, 1 April 1983, McNear Papers; Corey Kilgannon, “Keyboard Virtuoso, NYT, 19 November 1995; Pamela Dorian, “Everyone Is a Winner!” UrbanMysticMusing.com, 14 April 2009; DJG interviews with William Araiza and Jeremy Feinberg. SSDI indicates that Diane Dee was born in June 1924, and died in December 2009, age eighty-five.

  40. Julius Genachowski, “Senate to Trustees: Divest!” CS, 28 March 1983, p. 1; Jeff Adler, “Divest Rally Outside Trustee Meeting Draws 100,” CS, 5 April 1983, p. 1; Julius Genachowski, “Students Keep Up Vigil to Force CU Divestment,” CS, 21 April 1983, p. 2; Leslie Dreyfous, “Danny Armstrong,” CS, 17 May 1983, p. 19; Julius Genachowski, “Columbia Will Not Divest,” CS, 13 July 1983, p. 1; Tony Vellela, New Voices: Student Activism in the ’80s and ’90s (South End Press, 1988), pp. 19–38; Siddiqi interview with Jim Gilmore; DJG interviews with Alex McNear, Verna Bigger Myers, Janis Hardiman Robinson, Wayne P. Weddington III, Darwin Malloy, Gerrard Bushell, Michael Ackerman, Charles V. Hamilton, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Michael Baron; Daniel Armstrong, Barbara Ransby, Kieth Cockrell, Derek Hawkins, Joseph H. Zwicker, Tim Todreas, and John G. Ruggie e-mails to DJG; Hollis R. Lynch, “After Bad Start, CU Must Be More Representative,” CS, 22 February 1983, pp. 3, 6; Susan Scheiner, “Blacks Have Rough Time with CU’s White Climate,” CS, 25 April 1983, pp. 5, 13; Helen Kennedy, “Obama’s Quiet Yrs. in NYC,” NYDN, 14 January 2007, p. 26; Ross Goldberg, “Obama’s Years at Columbia Are a Mystery,” New York Sun, 2 September 2008; “Obama’s Lost Years,” WSJ, 11 September 2008, p. A14; Maraniss, BOTS, pp. 436–37, 459; Obama’s 2001 interview with Julieanna Richardson; Obama’s 2002 television appearance with Chinta Strausberg; Obama’s 21 August 2006 remarks at the South African Institute for International Affairs, available at southafrica.usembassy.gov; Jim Popkin, “Obama and the Case of the Missing Thesis,” MSNBC, 24 July 2008; Betsy Morais, “After Long Absence,” CS, 11 September 2008; Broad a
nd Sanger, “Obama’s Youthful Ideals,” NYT, 5 July 2009. See also Obama’s unique reference in John Corr, “From Mean Streets to Hallowed Halls,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 February 1990, pp. C1, C4: Columbia “was on a hill. . . . A lot of my education happened when I walked down the hill and into Harlem.” On the wonderful Chuck Hamilton, see Wilbur C. Rich, “From Muskogee to Morningside Heights: Political Scientist Charles V. Hamilton,” Columbia Magazine, Spring 2004.

  41. Obama to Alex McNear, 27 April 1983, McNear Papers; McNear to Andrew Roth, 12 May 1983, Roth Papers; DJG interviews with Alex McNear, Hasan Chandoo, Asad Jumabhoy, and Tim Jessup; Richard Bernstein, “For 7,300 at Columbia, a Day Full of Balloons and Diplomas,” NYT, 18 May 1983, pp. B1, B4; Richard Pollack, “7,329 Graduate CU in a Festive Mood,” CS, 25 May 1983, pp. 1, 6; John R. Pulliam, “Obama Big on Ceremonies,” GRM, 5 June 2005; Scott, A Singular Woman, pp. 243, 245, 249, 254–55; Obama to Alex McNear, 27 June (postmarked 5 July) 1983, McNear Papers; Obama to Phil Boerner, n.d., ca. 27 June 1983, Boerner Papers; Ann Dunham Sutoro, “Civil Rights of Working Indonesian Women,” Institute for Legal Aid, Jakarta, 10 December 1982, 5pp., and Sutoro, “The Effects of Industrialization on Women Workers in Indonesia,” n.d., ca. 1982, 18pp., Atria Institute Archives; Ann Dunham Soetoro Passport, April 1981–April 1986, Obama Family Papers, UH; Ann D. Sutoro to the Files, “Women’s Economic Activities in North Coast Fishing Communities,” Ford Foundation, 22 May 1983, 10pp., and Sutoro, “II. Program Statement: Women and Employment (Indonesia),” n.d., 1983, 41pp., esp. pp. 14, 17, Atria Institute Archives; Alice Dewey and Geoffrey White, “Ann Dunham: A Personal Reflection,” Anthropology News, November 2008, p. 20. Apropos of Dewey’s comment, Ann’s son would later recount, “I actually remember her saying to me once, ‘I don’t feel white. That’s not my identity.’” Wolffe, Renegade, p. 178. One news story would report that Dewey accompanied Dunham to Kenya. Dan Nakaso, “Obama’s Mother’s Work Focus of UH Seminar,” HA, 12 September 2008.

  42. Obama to Alex McNear, 1 September and 15 November 1983, McNear Papers; DJG interviews with Alex McNear and Hasan Chandoo. Obama would later write, “I decided to find more conventional work for a year, to pay off my student loans and maybe even save a little bit.” DFMF, p. 135. Per Cole’s Cross Reference Directory for Manhattan, 1984, p. 825 and 1985 p. 839, listing “D Reilly 866-8172,” the first public report of the 622 West 114th Street address was Beth J. Harpaz (AP), “Obama Slept Here: Roots in 3 Nations, 6 Time Zones,” 11 November 2008. When very limited selections from some but not all of Obama’s letters to McNear were publicized in 2012 (Maraniss, “Becoming Obama,” Vanity Fair, June 2012, and BOTS, pp. 450–52, 454–55, 464–65, 468–70, erroneously calling them “passionate”), one far more perceptive reporter labeled them “terribly pretentious . . . every discussion of the Great Existential Questions ends up being, basically, all about him and his superior philosophical mind and how he is on a higher plane than anyone else.” With “a slightly patronizing” attitude toward his girlfriend, “Who did this guy think he was, with all these delusions of grandeur?” Noreen Malone, “Barack Obama’s Old Girlfriends Get Dishy,” New York Magazine, 2 May 2012.

  43. Obama in John Corr, “From Mean Streets to Hallowed Halls,” Philadelphia Inquirier, 27 February 1990, pp. C1, C4; DJG interviews with Cathy Lazere, Lou Celi, Barry Rutizer, Beth Noymer Levine, Dan Armstrong, Lisa Shachtman Hennessey, Peggy Mendelow, Brenda Vinson, Michael Williams, and Steve Delaney; Susan Arterian Chang e-mail to DJG; Dan Armstrong, “Barack Obama Embellishes His Resume,” analyzethis.net, 9 July 2005, and ensuing comments by Bill Millar and Beth Noymer Levine; Financing Foreign Operations—Interest Rate & Foreign Exchange Updater, 15 December 1983, 15 January 1984, 15 and 31 March 1984, 15 April 1984; Financing Foreign Operations Financial Update Bulletin, 15 December 1983, 2pp.; Business International Money Report [BIMR], 6, 13, and 20 January 1984, 3 February 1984, esp. pp. 33–35, 9 March 1984; Business International Weekly Report to Managers of Worldwide Operations, 6, 13, and 20 January 1984, 3 and 10 February 1984, 26 March 1984; Janny Scott, “Obama’s Account,” NYT, 30 October 2007; Scott Horsley, “Obama’s Early Brush with Financial Markets,” NPR, 9 July 2008; Noymer in Lisa Miller and Richard Wolffe, “Finding His Faith,” Newsweek, 21 July 2008, pp. 26ff.; Jessica Ravitz, “Utahn Recounts Sharing Job with Obama in New York,” Salt Lake Tribune, 27 August 2008.

  44. DJG interviews with Andrew Roth, Genevieve Cook, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and John Ayers; John Ayers e-mail to DJG, 1 May 2012 (“Bill does not remember Genevieve Cook from Bank Street. ‘Hey, that was almost thirty years ago’”); Genevieve Cook, “Dancing in Doorways,” B.A. thesis, Swarthmore College, May 1981, esp. pp. 1–2, 95; “Barack Obama” and “Recipes from Bill Ayers,” Cook Papers; Cook in Maraniss, BOTS, p. 472. On Helen Ibbitson Jessup, see her book Court Arts of Indonesia (Harry N. Abrams, 1990), and Paul Richard, “Under Java’s Spell,” WP, 19 May 1991. On Michael J. Cook, see Pilita Clark, “Ambassador on the Warpath,” Sydney Morning Herald, 11 March 1993, p. 13. On Philip C. Jessup’s work in Indonesia, see Henry Kamm, “Indonesia Nickel Project Reflects 2 Worlds,” NYT, 14 April 1978, pp. D1, D14. Jessup died in August 2013 at age eighty-seven. See Evi Mariani, “In Memoriam: Mining Executive Philip Jessup’s Deep Connection to Indonesia,” Jakarta Post, 23 October 2013.

  Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn had lived underground for over a decade following their April 2, 1970, indictment on federal criminal charges. Those charges were dropped in early 1974 because they involved unconstitutional warrantless electronic surveillance, but both Ayers and Dohrn remained underground until Dohrn surrendered on December 3, 1980, in Chicago to face state charges still pending against her—but not Ayers—from the violent October 1969 “Days of Rage.” A front-page November 27 New York Times story had reported they had been living at 520 W. 123rd and that more than a dozen New Yorkers had identified Dohrn. All three major television networks covered Dohrn’s December 3 surrender on their evening news broadcasts. On January 13, 1981, Dohrn pled guilty to reduced charges, was fined $1,500, and was granted probation that allowed her and her family to return to 520 West 123rd Street.

  Sixteen months later, however, in the wake of an October 20, 1981, armored car robbery in Nanuet, New York, that left one Brink’s employee and two police officers dead, a federal grand jury subpoenaed Dohrn to supply particular examples of her handwriting. Rental vehicles used in both the Nanuet holdup and an earlier April 1980 one had been rented by women using counterfeit drivers’ licenses of customers who had patronized Broadway Baby, an Upper West Side store where Dohrn had worked under a pseudonym for six months prior to the February 1980 birth of her second son, Malik. Dohrn refused to submit the handwriting samples and was jailed for contempt. Seven months later, concluding that Dohrn’s handwriting samples were superfluous to the prosecution of the Nanuet killers, Judge Gerard L. Goettel let Dorhn go free. In re Dohrn, 560 F. Supp. 179 (S. D. N. Y.), 5 January 1983. See also “Indictments Voided for 12 Weathermen,” NYT, 4 January 1974, p. 41; Nathaniel Sheppard Jr., “2 in Weather Underground Are Bargaining to Surrender,” NYT, 24 November 1980, p. A18; Josh Barbanel, “Bernardine Dohrn Reportedly Seen on the West Side,” NYT, 27 November 1980, pp. A1, D12; Benita Brodt and Ronald Koziol, “Defiant Dohrn Surrenders,” CT, 4 December 1980, p. 1; Nathaniel Sheppard Jr., “Bernardine Dohrn Gives Up to Authorities in Chicago,” NYT, 4 December 1980, p. A18; Nathaniel Sheppard Jr., “Chicago Home of Friend Was Refuge for Miss Dohrn,” NYT, 5 December 1980, p. A22; Douglas E. Kneeland, “Ex-Radical Leader Gets Probation and Fine in Chicago,” NYT, 14 January 1981, p. A12; M. A. Farber, “Behind the Brink’s Case: Return of the Radical Left,” NYT, 16 February 1982, pp. A1, B4; “Miss Dohrn Refusing to Aid Brink’s Case,” NYT, 18 May 1982, p. B3; “Miss Dohrn Jailed for Contempt,” NYT, 20 May 1982, p. B12; “Bernardine Dohrn Freed by Judge,” NYT, 6 January 1983, p. B3; Eileen Putman (AP), “Radical Dohrn Released, Not Sorry,” Palm Beach Post, 15 February 1983, pp. A7, A8; Sam Roberts, “Bar Panel to Con
sider Dohrn’s Fitness,” NYT, 26 August 1985, p. B4; Peter Howell, “Hippie Terrorists Reincarnated,” Toronto Star, 18 October 2003; Patrick Healy, “A Playwright’s Glimmers of a Fugitive Childhood,” NYT, 3 September 2009. On “smash monogamy,” see Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Jeff Jones, Sing a Battle Song (Seven Stories Press, 2006), pp. 136, 204.

  45. Genevieve Cook Journal, 10, 12, 22, 26, and 29 January 1984, Cook to Obama, 10 January 1984, Cook poem beginning “saya rasa,” 29 January 1984, Cook journal, 5 and 11 February 1984, Cook alphabetical poem for Obama, n.d., Cook Papers; Dunham to Alice Dewey, 13 February 1984, Dunham Papers; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook, Hasan Chandoo, Cathy Lazere, Beth Noymer Levine, Lou Celi, Barry Rutizer, Lisa Shachtman Hennessey, Dan Armstrong, and Peggy Mendelow; Celi in Issenberg, BG, 6 August 2008.

  46. Genevieve Cook journal, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, and 27 February 1984, 5, 9, 17, and 20 March 1984; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook and Phil Boerner; Michael Isbell e-mail to DJG.

  47. Genevieve Cook journal, 22, 25, and 29 March 1984, 1 April 1984; Richard F. Shepard, “Going Out Guide,” NYT, 9 February 1984, p. C32; Mel Gussow, “How Billie Whitelaw Interprets Beckett,” NYT, 14 February 1984, p. C13; Frank Rich, “A Whitelaw Beckett,” NYT, 17 February 1984, p. C3; Bruce Weber, “Billie Whitelaw, 82, Longtime Beckett Muse,” NYT, 23 December 2014, p. A20; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook, Hasan Chandoo, and Beenu Mahmood; Sohale Siddiqi interview with Jim Gilmore; Howell Raines, “Hart and Mondale Clash Repeatedly in Sixth Debate,” NYT, 29 March 1984, p. A1; Mike Shanahan (AP), “Debate: Most Personal, Acrimonious Exchanges,” 29 March 1984; Fred Rothenberg (AP), “Close Contact Makes for Lively Debate,” 29 March 1984; Gerald M. Boyd, “Thousands Cheer Jackson at Rally in Harlem,” NYT, 1 April 1984, p. 29; Chandoo in Pete Hisey, “Center Stage,” Occidental Magazine, Fall 2004, pp. 24–29; Mahmood, “Readings with Barack,” 30 September 2008. In 2008 Obama’s campaign would acknowledge that in 1984 he was registered to vote at 622 West 114th Street, although the site where that acknowledgment appeared, www.commongroundpolitics.net, has since disappeared from the Web.