A group of Harvard Law School students announced their support for Barack Obama ’91 last week at an event held in Pound Hall to rally support for the Obama campaign. Students poured into the aisles of the packed classroom to hear what faculty members who knew Obama during his days as a student had to say about the man who has excited so much presidential buzz.
“Barack Obama has the ability to bring together Americans from a wide range of age groups, beliefs, and backgrounds,” said Shahiedah Shabazz ’09, one of the student organizers of Harvard Law Students for Obama and a Chicago native. “He challenges all of us to be a generation of leaders where intelligence and integrity are the norm and not an anomaly, and he stands out as one of the few leaders with such character.”
HLS for Obama organizers were on hand to sign students up for volunteer opportunities with the campaign in New Hampshire, and a representative from the Obama campaign spoke to students, encouraging them to support campaign efforts in New England.
It was also announced that Obama will be coming to Boston on April 20 to speak to a student-only audience. HLS for Obama has established their own website for distributing tickets to the event, which will cost $23.
Harvard faculty members are also throwing their support behind Obama. Professors Laurence Tribe ’66, Charles Ogletree ’78, and Kenneth Mack ’91 were on hand at the event to offer words of praise for Obama.
“He was committed to speaking a language that went across political bounds,” said Mack, who was one of Obama’s classmates at HLS. “We need that common language of progressive politics.”
Tribe is also co-hosting a fundraising event with Professor David Wilkins ’80, which has been dubbed as an opportunity for Obama’s professors to “welcome their prodigal son back to Cambridge” by the New York Observer.
Obama is not the only HLS alum seeking a presidential nomination getting attention from students. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney ’75 is also generating excitement from HLS students who are able to work in his campaign headquarters, which are located in Boston.
“I was just really impressed by the message he had and the record he had in Massachusetts and decided I really wanted to work with him,” said Sara Isgur ’08, who is working in the Romney campaign counsel office as part of a clinical course. “How lucky is it to have a major presidential campaign in the city where I happened to be going to law school?”