THE OBAMA FAMILY AND HARVARD UNIVERSITY!!!

The Obama Family And Harvard University.......By T. D. S. A. Dissanayaka
(Retired Ambassador and Author)
1961 was indeed a splendid year for the Obama family. Dr. Barak Hussein Obama Snr. a graduate student in Economics from Kenya at the University of Hawaii on a Fullbright Scholarship averaged a A+ He was therefore awarded directly a scholarship to the prestigious Harvard University. He thus became the first ever Kenyan student at Harvard which was then eclipsing even Oxford. So said a letter of congratulations from Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya who invited Dr. Obama to join his staff on his eventual return home.

More importantly, baby Barack Hussein Obama was born in 1961. His mother was Anne. She was Dunham from Kansas and a white American who was also a student at the University of Hawaii. The Dunhams were fond grandparents. They doted on the baby and brought him up so that the parents could continue as full time students.

Then, in my time at Harvard, and an even now a direct scholarship to Harvard entails only free tuition and a meager allowance equated to the dole, to keep body and soul together. Therefore Dr. Obama had to leave behind his wife and baby son behind with the Dunhams and proceed to Harvard. Unfortunately Dr. and Mrs. Obama divorced within two years. Her second husband was an Indonesian who was also a student at the University of Hawaii.

In 1979 at his High School in Honolulu, Hawaii, the young Obama did well enough to gain admission to the Occidental College in California. As his grades improved he got admission to the famous Columbia University in New York. As his grades improved still further he obtained a scholarship to Harvard. Scholarships to Harvard are awarded to those with an A average or those who could prove to beyond doubt to Harvard that the applicant had exceptional potential.

Young Obama was in the second category. He gained admission to the Harvard Law School in 1987. In 1990 he became the first Afro-American student to be elected the Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1991 and found himself gainful employment in a law firm in Chicago handling civil rights.

Michelle Robinson Obama entered the Harvard Law School in 1993 and also found gainful employment in Chicago. The couple met in Chicago and married in 1995. They were blessed with two daughters born in Chicago in 1997 and 2003.

An unquestioned intellectual capacity and self-evident refinement are the hallmarks of alumni and alumnae of Harvard down the ages. These attribute are abundantly clear to Sri Lankans in Ambassador Robert O. Blake Jnr. the current controversial United States Ambassador based in Colombo. It was just as clear to Sri Lankans in Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, a real friend of Sri Lanka during dark days and in happier times. These attributes were just as clear to Americans in President-elect Obama. By the same token in President John F. Kennedy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Theodore Roosevelt the youngest ever President of the United States, all loyal sons of Harvard.

Michele Robionson Obama was indeed a superb Public Relations Offices in introducing her husband to the Democratic Convention in Detroit 2008. She even eclipsed the Harvard - educated Senator Elizabeth Dole who introduced her lackluster husband Senator Bob Dole to the Republican Convention of 1996 in Chicago.

Since time immemorial Harvard has encouraged her students and alumni to write books. Accordingly John F. Kennedy, as an undergraduate in 1939 wrote "Why England Slept". His father was then the United States Ambassador in London and young Kennedy toured Nazi Germany, beleaguered Poland and helpless Czechoslovakia mid Poland in August 1939. Then later that month Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland. It resulted in the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.

In 1957 Senator John F. Kennedy won the coveted Pulitzer prize for his first-best seller "Profiles in Courage". While an undergraduate at Harvard, Barack Obama wrote his first book "My Father’s Dreams" a very factual account of the Obama father and son Obama in the United States and Kenya. In 2007 Senator Barack Obama wrote his first best-seller "The Audacity of Hope" a very perceptive and lucid account of his view of contemporary America and her needs for urgent reforms. During his campaign for the Presidency in 2007 and 2008, it helped him to sweep aside the then favourite Senator Hillary Clinton who loudly claimed that America was now ready for a woman president. (That was factually correct).

The victory of President elect Obama was indeed a victory for the entire United States. Now even the Afro-Americans whose ancestors were freed from the bondage of slavery by President Abraham Lincoln can realistically aspire to be elected President of the United States.

There is the golden lesson for us Sri Lankans in the victory of President-elect Obama. The proof is definitive that only a Sinhalese Buddhist can realistically aspire to be elected President or Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. During the British era the Tamils, Christians and Burghers were the favoured lot and that was bad. After Independence the Sinhalese and Buddhists became the favoured lot. That was worse. The price of this folly is a Civil War which has gone on for a quarter century with no end in sight!!

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