Originally Posted by [url=http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=164745
For WorldNetDaily, Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliot[/url]]Appeared with Columbia activist, Ayers
Obama has revealed almost nothing about his last two years as an undergraduate at Columbia University's Columbia College.
Obama has said he was involved with the Black Students Organization, which emerged in the 1960s in response to a growing black student population at Columbia. Undergraduates formed the Student Afro-American Society, "which was concerned with the affairs of black students and issues of the greater black community."
The Coalition for a Free South Africa, or CFSA, began as a Black Students' Organization committee to promote Columbia University's divestment in stock in companies doing business in South Africa.
CFSA, which split from the Black Students' Organization in 1981, was a loosely structured group with a predominantly black steering committee of about a dozen individuals who made decisions by consensus, and a less active circle of about fifty students who attended meetings and the group's protests and educational events."
Early CFSA leaders were Danny Armstrong, a Columbia College student who played forward for Columbia's basketball team, and Barbara Ransby, a student from the School of General Studies
As CFSA spokeswoman, Ransby famously convinced Columbia's student senate "to support full divestment."
Ransby, now an associate professor of African-American studies and history at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and the executive director of Public Square, was in the class of 1984 at Columbia, only one year behind Obama, who would later publicly appear with both Ransby and Ayers.
In April 2002, Ransby appeared at a University of Illinois-Chicago forum and sat on the same panel – "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis: Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations" – with both Obama and Ayers.
Obama knew FCC chief from Columbia activism?
Another name that emerges from Obama's involvement with the Black Students' Organization and Coalition for a Free South Africa is that of Julius Genachowski.
In October 2008, Genachowski, co-founder of the venture capital firm LaunchBox Digital, was described as "an adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama."
Obama and Genakowski were later Harvard Law School classmates.
In August 2008 it was reported in the New York Times that Genachowski, who led the Obama campaign's technology working group, was also a big fundraiser. Genachowski raised at least $500,000 as an Obama "bundler."
In March 2009, Obama nominated Genachowski to chair the Federal Communications Commission, and he was sworn in June 29, 2009.