Barack Obama was a transfer student from California’s Occidental College when he came to Columbia University in 1981 as a 20-year-old junior. More than 20,000 students currently attend Columbia....

Columbia University Libraries in New York will produce the official oral history of Barack Obama's presidency. Obama Foundation officials announced Thursday, May 16, 2019 that the project at The Columbia Center for Oral History Research will provide a record of the decisions, actions and effects of Obama's presidency.

Obama is the first attendee of Columbia College to occupy the Oval Office. Obama was also the first Columbia College alumnus to be nominated by a major modern party ticket, and the first CC alum to be a major party nominee since the Federalists nominated DeWitt Clinton in 1812.

A 1981 Columbia University student ID card identifies Barack Obama as a foreign student named Barry Soetoro.

One month before the 2008 presidential election, The Wall Street Journal published an article questioning the legitimacy of then-candidate Barack Obama’s claim that he attended Columbia University. “The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography,” the article read.

Barack Obama enrolled at the Occidental College in 1979 but transferred to the reputable Columbia University in 1981, where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree. Later on, in 1988, Obama also attended Harvard University for a second degree.

That’s the sum total of Obama's existence at Columbia University, Class of '83. So I asked every classmate I met at our 30 th reunion, many of them Political Science majors, if they ever met, or saw, or heard of Obama. The answer was a resounding NO from every one of them. I asked if they found this strange, or worried how this was possible?

A January 2005 Columbia College Today profile of Barack Obama as a Columbia alumnus. A Columbia College press release from November 2008 identifying him as “the first College alumnus to be elected...