

We enjoyed exploring museums such as the Guggenheim, the Met and the American Museum of Natural History, and browsing in bookstores such as the Strand and the Barnes & Noble opposite Columbia. Occasionally we went to The West End for beers. In an article published in Columbia College Today, Boerner also wrote:īoerner: I remember often eating breakfast with Barack at Tom’s Restaurant on Broadway. Boerner recalled that Obama sometimes wrapped himself in a sleeping bag to keep warm in the chilly apartment they shared, and that some nights he would cook chicken curry for dinner. The article included excerpts from the Columbia student directory, showing Obama living during his junior year at 142 West 109th Street near Columbia’s campus in New York City, and during his senior year at 339 East 94th Street. Last year, the New York Times wrote about Phil Boerner, who roomed with the future president during his first year at Columbia. The university magazine Columbia College Today profiled him as far back as 2005, after he was elected to the U.S. And it’s absolutely untrue that “not one person has ever come forward” from his years there, or that he is “the man who wasn’t there.”Ĭolumbia University proudly claims Obama as a 1983 graduate. The enrollment in the early ’80s might have been lower, but not everybody would have met or remembered Obama. More than 20,000 students currently attend Columbia. He also accused reporters of giving Obama a pass on the issue.We’re not sure why, but this false claim has been forwarded widely in recent days, judging by the number of queries we’ve received.īarack Obama was a transfer student from California’s Occidental College when he came to Columbia University in 1981 as a 20-year-old junior. In a sometimes-testy exchange with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night, Trump insisted he had heard the birth certificate is “missing” from official Hawaiian state records, and again called on Obama to produce it. He’s suggested Obama ought to show his birth certificate and has rejected pushback that the certification of live birth that Team Obama made available in 2008, and which is what Hawaiian officials issue in response to requests for birth documents, serves as proof. Trump has already said he has investigators on the ground in Hawaii looking into proof of Obama’s birth in the state, which the real estate magnate has questioned repeatedly. He graduated Harvard Law magna cum laude in 1991, after serving as editor of the prestigious Law Review.

Obama transferred to Columbia University in 1981 from Occidental College, and graduated two years later. “There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.” “We don’t know a thing about this guy,” Trump said. Trump added, “I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can’t get into Harvard.”

Let him show his records,” he said, without providing backup for his claim. “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. “I heard he was a terrible student, terrible,” Trump told the Associated Press in an interview, a claim he’s made in the past but one he doubled down on by suggesting he’s probing that area of the president’s life. Trump openly questioned how Obama, who he said had been a “terrible student,” got accepted into Columbia University for undergraduate studies and then Harvard Law School.
