BOâs street creds as an intellectual are based in part on these facts: He
graduated from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude; and he was the first black
President of the Harvard Law Review. But as you will see, this doesnât mean he
is smart.
The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization, formally independent of
the Harvard Law School. Its primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal
scholarship. Student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions
and, together with a professional business staff of three, carry out day-to-day
operations.
Hereâs how editors are chosen for the Harvard Law Review. Fourteen editors (two
from each 1L section) are selected based on a combination of their first-year
grades and their competition scores. Twenty editors are selected based solely on
their competition scores. The remaining editors are selected on a discretionary
basis. Some of these discretionary slots may be used to implement the Reviewâs
affirmative action policy.
According to the NYT, hereâs how BO was chosen to head the Review.
Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the reviewâs 80 editors that convened
Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.
Until the 1970âs the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the
president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank.
Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin
Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under
Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.
That system came under attack in the 1970âs and was replaced by a program in
which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are
chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system,
disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became
editors of The Law Review.
The first female editor of the Harvard Law Review was Susan Estrich, in 1977.
According to his campaign, after being elected its President, BO never published
anything in the Harvard Law Review.
However, recently, Politico unearthed an unsigned and previously unattributed
1990 âcase commentâ in which BO affirms his support of abortion rights.
Charles Hamilton Houston was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review in
1920, based on a record of grades that were âmostly Aâs and a scattering of
Bâs.â
Magna Cum?
Just because he graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude doesnât mean
BO had a high GPA. It just means that after subtracting the students who
graduated summa cum laude, of the remaining students, he graduated in the top
10% of his class. Theoretically, he could have had a C average.
And Harvard has a well-documented history of inflating grades.
So, If He Isnât Smart, How Did He Get Into Harvard In The First Place?
Attorney Percy Sutton, who has represented such controversial figures as Malcolm
X, explained he received a letter from Dr. Khalid al Mansour, of Texas, whom he
describes as the âprincipal advisor to one of the worldâs richest men,â asking
him to use his Harvard connections to help out an applicant to Harvard Law named
Barack Obama. According to Attorney Sutton, per Dr. al Mansourâs request, he
wrote to friends at Harvard, describing Obama, whom he had never met, as a
âgeniusâ they would want to help out any way they could.
Conclusion
In sum, given that BO was admitted into Harvard Law School based on the
recommendation of a well-connected friend; that he became the president of the
student law review based on all-night balloting that finally gave him the
majority vote in the morning; that he failed to publish any scholarly articles
in the review; and that he graduated with honors from this school famous for
inflating grades; without seeing his academic transcripts from Harvard Law
School, there is no basis to conclude he is intelligent, at least based on these
associations with that institution.
