I suggested in yesterday's article that Obama and Ayers probably met when Obama was at Columbia and Ayers was at the nearby Bank Street College. (They had Edward Said as a common connection.) Even if my hypothesis is not right, Obama and Ayers were both involved in a hotly contested education reform controversy in Chicago in 1987-88. And as Ed Whelan has noted, from 1984-88, Ayers wife, Bernadine Dohrn, was an intern at the Sidley Austin law firm, where Michelle Obama was an intern in 1987 and became an associate in 1988
Obama was given very weighty responsibility in 1995 over what was a $150M+ education reform project that Ayers masterminded. At the time, Obama was only a third-year associate at a small law firm, with no executive experience. It is highly, highly unlikely that Ayers would have permitted such an arrangement unless he knew and trusted Obama. Given the common places and people in their past, it is a virtual certainty that they met before 1995.
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