I met Barack Obama and got to know him while he was a student at Occidental College. My memories of young Obama have appeared in a number of historical books including David Garrow’sRising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. This is a 1,460 page pre-presidential biography published by HarperCollins in May 2017.
At the time I met the young Obama, I was a graduate student at Cornell University, doing my first work as a teaching assistant in political science. My sense of him at the time is that he was of average intelligence. I don’t remember him making any particularly insightful comments when we spoke. I think it is safe to say that he was most likely a solid B student.
To be fair, the Barack Obama I met in 1980–1981 was more interested in parties, cocaine and radical politics than his academic record. I think it is only common sense to assert that the only reason his Occidental College GPA has not been released is that it would have been bad news for him.
I’m writing this to counter-act some of the extreme Barack Obama sycophantic comments suggesting he is some sort of genius. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no record of him being particularly talented at math, statistics, or any of the hard sciences. He served as the editor of the law review at Harvard, but didn’t bother to produce any articles of his own for it.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I could not help but notice that Donald Trump is offering to donate $5 million to one of Obama’s favorite charities if only Obama releases a range of sensitive documents including his undergraduate transcript from Occidental College. I wish Trump would just give the money to me. After all, I believe I have the personal experience and training needed to verify the gist of Trump’s concerns: I can confirm that Obama is an affirmative action president.
I observed that the young Obama had the IQ of an average white college student when I first met him over Christmas break in 1980. Obama was then a sophomore at Oxy and I was a graduate of Oxy who was paying my dues as a political science graduate student at Cornell. I met young Obama when I was in Portolla Valley, CA, reconnecting with my college-era Marxist sweetheart, Caroline Boss. By then, Boss had shared two classes with young Obama, an international relations course taught by Larry Caldwell and Carlos Egan and a political theory class taught by Roger Boesche. Ironically, I taught alongside both Egan and Boesche while I was an assistant professor in the political science department at Williams College.
Boss knew young Obama well enough to let me know that he was “one of us” meaning that he shared our radical point of view and all the class warfare angst associated with it. For the life of me, however, I do not remember her saying anything to the effect that young Obama was one of the brightest students at Oxy--much less a genius.
The bad news, for Trump and others, is that I do not believe Obama’s transcripts would tell us anything about either his nationality or scholarship status. Mine do not. My nationality is not indicated and I do not see any field on the transcript where it would be noted by school officials. I should add that I got to Oxy on a track scholarship. (I ran a 4:23 mile in high school.) However, I see no mention of my athletic prowess or that scholarship on my undergraduate transcript. Reviewing my own transcript, I can report that I earned straight A’s my freshman year. These transcripts also show my SAT scores. I am sure Obama’s transcripts would show his SAT scores too. This would be useful information, in part, because we can estimate a person’s IQ from their SAT scores.
If Trump is reading this piece, I can report that I have gotten good at guessing someone’s IQ. I suspect that anyone who – like me – has made a living as a college professor, a college admissions counselor, or a management consultant gets good at this task. In my case, I also have the experience of growing up with a younger brother who has a genius level IQ and the rocket science resume to back it up.
I can report to Trump that the young Obama came across as an average white guy. This, of course, is exactly what he was. Obama had a white mother and grew up nurtured by his white grandparents. Based on my exposure to young Obama, I estimate that his grades were in the middle B’s and that his IQ was slightly above average for a college student. Personally, I am not surprised by his recent comments on the Jay Leno show to the effect that he was not particularly good at math--“Malia is now a freshman in high school. I’m pretty lost.” I suspect that Obama has been pretty lost for a long time since he does not report taking any college or graduate school classes that might have demanded skill in math, science or economics.
In conclusion, I should add that I have had the opportunity witness a number of former presidents speaking to live audiences. I feel confident making some comparisons. For example, I do not think Obama is blessed with a higher IQ than Carter or Clinton. Obama is not smarter than either George H.W. Bush or his son George W. Bush. Of all of these former presidents, including Reagan, the only one who startled me with his intelligence was Clinton who I saw during a recent business trip to Little Rock, Arkansas. All in all, I think it is reasonable to assert that the only reason Obama is now president is that so many people mistook him to be a genuine African-American, the sort of person who deserved an affirmative action boost to get ahead.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
One of the most interesting aspects of the news, for me, is watching the Obama team dodge questions about Obama's past. Just today, for example, Ed Henry of Fox News asked Obama spokesperson, Jay Carney, about Obama's college transcripts. I was surprised at how quickly Carney dodged the question and simply referred the reporter to the Obama campaign.
The truth of the matter is that there must be bad new in those transcripts or they would have been released a long time ago. I met the young Obama while he was a sophomore at Occidental College and long before he became a genius in the eyes of so many simply by getting himself elected as president of the Harvard Law Review.
The young Obama I met was a person of average intellect for the Occidental College campus. He seemed more like the sort of guy who was interested in parties than in serious academic issues. He was, as I have indicated before, a Marxist socialist anticipating a Communist style revolution in the U.S. He did not, however, show any signs of superior intellectual potential.
As I have said for a long time now, Obama's charisma depends, in part, on the perception that he is a genius. As one of those who got to know how young Obama's mind worked, I can assure you that he was not, and never was a genius.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
