Obama Campaign Energizes HLS

Just a month after Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) declared his candidacy for the presidency, more than 90 students and faculty from Harvard Law School—Obama’s alma mater—gathered last night to rally support for his campaign.

Energetic students sporting Obama campaign buttons flowed into the aisles as the classroom in Pound Hall packed in a matter of minutes.

“There is a buzz on campus surrounding his campaign,” said Caleb R. Weaver, a member of the steering committee for Harvard Law Students for Barack Obama. He said he had seen the same excitement at an earlier event with students from other Boston-area universities.

Students at the event were encouraged to translate their excitement into action. Members of Obama’s campaign in New Hampshire were on hand to tell students how they could get involved with the process.

“What’s going to determine the success of this campaign is whether the students who are interested in Obama, feel like they’ll be able to make a difference,” said Reid Cherlin, the press secretary for the senator’s New Hampshire campaign. “It’s about getting the work done.”

While students would also be allowed to research policy-based issues, the majority of the work would be hands-on—a task that many Law School students said they were willing to take on.

“The depth of the commitment is striking,” Cherlin said. “There is a willingness to do the grunt work.”

Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree called on students to communicate their passion for Obama to impoverished areas, where residents may not feel the same connection to the Law School alum.

“Don’t just go to your comfort zone,” Ogletree said. “It’s not how much money you raise. It’s how much consciousness you raise.”

Law School professors who personally knew Obama from his days at the Law School also offered their enthusiastic support for the senator’s candidacy, calling it an opportunity to bridge the country’s partisan divide.

“He was committed to speaking a language that went across political bounds,” said Professor of Law Kenneth W. Mack, who was one of Obama’s Harvard classmates. “We need that common language of progressive politics.”

Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62, who employed Obama as a research assistant when the senator was still a student, said that Obama had the potential to become one of the best presidents in United States history.

“We are dealing with someone who has a chance of being the greatest president since Franklin Roosevelt,” Tribe said.

He briefly paused, and then he added, “Well, maybe I could drop the Franklin Roosevelt part.”

—Staff writer Kevin Zhou can be reached at kzhou@fas.harvard.edu.