"During his 1959 trip to the United States, the 29-year-old Mboya raised enough money for scholarships for 81 young Kenyans, including Obama Sr., with the help of the African-American Students Foundation. Records show that almost 8,000 individuals contributed. Early supporters included baseball star Jackie Robinson, who gave $4,000, and actors Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.
There was enormous excitement when the Britannia aircraft took off for New York with the future Kenyan elite on board. After a few weeks of orientation, the students were dispatched to universities across the United States to study subjects that would help them govern Kenya after the departure of the British. Obama Sr. was interested in economics and was sent to Hawaii, where he met, and later married, a Kansas native named Ann Dunham. Barack Jr. was born in August 1961.
I seriously doubt that a man with as high opinion of himself as BO, Sr. would have willingly chosen to study at UH without a scholarship. UH definitely lacked academic clout, as your link to the East-West Center's history correctly reports: "Though first-rate in a few fields, such as tropical agriculture and marine biology, the university was best known for a summer hula course, low faculty pay and an uninspired board of regents." Having a UH degree didn't exactly embellish one's resume, which would also explain his drive to go to Harvard -- a graduate degree that would go a long way towards obscuring the below-par undergraduate school.
Although the East-West Center wasn't formerly established until after Sr. graduated, the article does say that "the university set up the center as a confusing blend of graduate and undergraduate studies" in 1960. I would think Russian was on the list, as a hot-ticket item back in the early '60's. (Lolo Soetoro, BTW, was a student at the East-West Center. The A&E Biography briefly shows a shot of Lolo's UH ID badge, in which the date is obscured, but which clearly indicates "East-West Center." He looks incredibly young in the photo ID.)
Maraniss lends more weight to Sr.'s "contemporary" quote than he does his own paper's reporting, but considering the pathetically low journalistic standards the Hawaiian papers have demonstrated throughout the campaign, I doubt they were much better back then. Sr. was also something of a BS artist, like Jr., so if the papers did quote him correctly, he may have been talking through his hat.
I agree with you about the unexplained income needed to live off-campus and tour the US, but I don't believe the funds came from UH. It's more likely that the Dunhams supported him in exchange for his agreement to be Barry's surrogate father. In a sense, he would have been the perfect choice: a man of some prestige who was hell-bent on leaving Hawaii, as evidenced by his acceleration of his studies which enabled him to graduate in three years, and his anxiety to get to Harvard before he got called back to Kenya. He would play the role only briefly, and then they'd be done with him. Ann threw the monkey-wrench into the arrangement, apparently, by contacting him for some reason -- perhaps in support of her fantasizing to her son about his awesome birth father. Or perhaps it was the other way around: he was down and out in Kenyan political circles in 1971, and flat broke. The visit to Hawaii may have been a form of blackmail.
Even if Obama is the biological father (which I question) he might have required monetary persuasion to assent to paternity -- an issue that Madelyn Dunham would have been desparate to resolve, even by purchase.
There is an interesting article in “Time” about the Kenyan student airlift which I will see if I have in my favs. It was written in 1960 or so and explains the funding acquired for its execution. I found it when I was searching for info on Tom Mboya.
Another question which I haven’t been able to answer is:
How did Obama Sr manage to travel to HI in 1971 considering that the Boston.com article clearly stated that he had his passport pulled for several years after Mboya’s death in 1969?
As an aside, I noticed that Mboya’s widow, Pamela, passed away suddenly in South Africa in January of this year. I read a very short article which said she passed away suddenly while receiving treatment in South Africa. Her daughter, Dr Susan Mboya, now lives in Cincinnati and works for P&G.
I believe Senior’s Christmas trip in 1971 was to re-adopt (or whatever) Barack after his adoption in Indonesia, so he get get the Punahou scholarship.
I believe Obama was paid off by the Dunhams to do/sign whatever to get it done.
The Dunhams paid for his living arrangements. They probably paid for the airline ticket too.
I'd like to know more about the “family business” Senior was into.