rediff.com
News APP

NewsApp (Free)

Read news as it happens
Download NewsApp

Available on  gplay

Rediff.com  » News » Harvard forced 'playboyish' Obama's dad to leave?
This article was first published 13 years ago

Harvard forced 'playboyish' Obama's dad to leave?

Last updated on: April 29, 2011 13:46 IST

Image: Barack Obama, Sr., in this undated family snapshot
Photographs: Handout/Reuters

Even before the dust could settle on the controversy over United States President Barack Obama's birth certificate, new documents about his father have emerged claiming that Obama senior was forced to leave Harvard university amid concerns about his playboy ways.

Obama senior, a PhD candidate at Harvard, was forced to leave since the administrators were alarmed at the number of women in his life and his financial difficulties.

Documents obtained by weekly newspaper The Arizona Independent from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service through a Freedom of Information Act show that Harvard wanted "to try and cook something up to ease him (Barack Obama senior) out" since school administrators "were having difficulty with his financial arrangements and couldn't seem to figure out how many wives he had."

The documents also show that Harvard officials considered Obama senior to be a "slippery character."

According to federal immigration records, the senior Obama was forced to leave the university in 1964 before he could complete his doctorate in economics.

...

Harvard forced 'playboyish' Obama's dad to leave?

Image: Harvard University logo

He was denied an extension on his student visa in July 1964 partly because Harvard University sought his removal.

Obama senior had to leave the US since he became an illegal alien after his visa expired.

The report comes a day after President Obama, himself a Harvard Law School graduate, released his long-form birth certificate as a proof that he was born in the US.

According to a May 1964 memo in Obama senior's Immigration and Naturalisation Service file, an immigration official noted that Obama had passed his exams and was entitled to stay and complete the requirements for a PhD in economics.

However Harvard administrators, including the chairman of the economics department, tried to "ease him out....They are planning on telling him that they will not give him any money and that he had better return to Kenya and prepare his thesis at home," a Boston Globe report, quoting the immigration documents, said.

Later, an immigration inspector recorded in a memo that Harvard had asked the INS to hold up on Obama's request for an extension of his stay.

An investigator, M F McKeon, wrote "They (Harvard officials) weren't very impressed with him and asked us to hold up action on his application until they decided what action they could take in order to get rid of him."

Harvard forced 'playboyish' Obama's dad to leave?

Image: Barack Obama wth his father Barack Obama, Sr., in this undated family snapshot
Photographs: Handout/Reuters

The then director of Harvard's International Office David Henry advised Obama in a May letter that he had three weeks to make the necessary preparations to return to Nairobi.

Obama was compelled to leave the country in July 1964.

The CIS investigated the elder Obama as a polygamist, having a wife in Kenya and a "wife and child in Honolulu."

A memo added that "Polygamy is not an excludable or deportation charge as Subject (Obama senior) is a non-immigrant."

"For Obama, then 30 and widely expected to be a key player back home in newly independent Kenya, Harvard's decision was disastrous. Lacking the degree for which he so yearned, Obama embarked on an erratic career path that never lived up to his early promise," the Globe said.

A 1961 memo had also noted a statement from a foreign student adviser at the University of Hawaii, where Obama was a student in the 1960s.

In the note, the adviser states that "Subject (Obama Senior) has been running around with several girls since he first arrived here and last summer she cautioned him about his playboy ways. Subject replied that he would 'try' to stay away from the girls."

© Copyright 2024 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.