From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah (((Abunimah = The man Debbie Schlussel believes turned over his tape of the 2003 Obama/Khalidi/Palestinian celebration to the LA Times)))
~~~
October 29, 2008 EXCLUSIVE: Ali Abunimah is Likely Source of Secreted Obama/Khalidi/Ayres Tape; LA Times' Wallsten Plagiarized Schlussel Back in April, Said Politico
~~~
Edward Said
The Said-Khalidi-Obama Connection
The invaluable Andrew McCarthy takes note of a connection between Barack Obama and Edward Said, an apologist for terrorism, who played a key role in changing the field of Middle East Studies towards an anti-Western and anti-Israel bias.
Said, a writer and professor at Columbia University, trained many of the Middle East professors who now broadcast his message to thousands of students across America and the world. Said hated Israel so much that he was seen throwing rocks from Lebanon at Israeli soldiers across the border.
His role in distorting the field of Middle Eastern studies has prompted a counter-movement led, among others, by the esteemed Bernard Lewis of Princeton University. McCarthy:
Obama was a student at Columbia from 1981 to 1983. He refuses to discuss those years; it is known only that he studied for at least some time under Edward Said, the late PLO apologist.
Not only has Barack Obama refused to discuss those years-as he refuses to discuss much of his past, he will not release his transcripts from Columbia or his thesis that he wrote before he graduated (claiming he "lost" the thesis). Would a transcript reveal more about his education under Edward Said?
Not so ironically, Obama also enjoyed close relations with Rashid Khalidi when Khalidi was a professor at the University of Chicago. In 2003, Khalidi became the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and he now also serves as the director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.
Barack Obama was on the small board of the Woods Fund (along with Bill Ayers) when that fund (originally chartered to help the poor) gave two grants to the Arab American Action Network totaling $110,000 in the years 2001 and 2002. This group was headed by Khalidi's wife and engaged in a series of anti-Israel actions.