Elder Obama denied Harvard PhD

Elder Obama denied Harvard PhD
The Boston Globe ^ | April 29, 2011 | Sally Jacobs, Globe Staff

Posted on Friday, April 29, 2011 11:14:48 AM by Gondring

Throughout a tumultuous career as an economist in Nairobi in the 1960s, Barack Hussein Obama, President Obama’s father, claimed to have earned a PhD from Harvard University. But according to federal immigration records, Obama was forced to leave the school by administrators alarmed at his freewheeling personal life and financial difficulties.


In a May 1964 memo contained in the elder Obama’s Immigration and Naturalization Service file, an immigration inspector noted that Obama had passed his exams and was entitled to stay and complete the requirements for a PhD in economics. [...]

Not long afterward, Harvard asked the INS to hold up on Obama’s routine request for an extension of his stay, according to a June memo signed by immigration inspector M.F.McKeon. School administrators, the memo continued, “were having difficulty with his financial arrangements and couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he had.’’

Although Harvard had previously assured the INS that Obama could continue his degree program, David D. Henry, then the director of the university’s international office,
abruptly advised him in a May let ter that he had three weeks to make the necessary preparations to return to Nairobi.

Despite his vigorous protest, Obama was compelled to leave the country in July.
[...]
In April 1961, McCabe called immigration officials and expressed concern that Obama had recently married a young woman named Stanley Ann Dunham[...]
INS officials considered whether Obama could be deported if he were convicted of bigamy, but decided against it. [...]

Although Obama frequently claimed to have earned a PhD from Harvard in the years to come and insisted he be called Dr. Obama, he never fully recovered from disappointment over his failure to get the degree he had worked so hard for. [...]

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