July 27, 2008

(College, USA) - Conservative bloggers are up in arms over the fact that nobody can find Barack Obama's College Thesis. While I am hardly to be counted in the Salvation Senator's corner, I do know that this is truly a tempest in a Teapot Dome. Of all of the dumb things that Obama has said and done over his short life, a missing college thesis is not one of them.

I don't have my college thesis, and as I remember, it was a dang good one. I'll bet my college professor doesn't have a copy of it either. There are two reasons for this; college professors don't keep submitted papers forever, and he's dead - a more meaningful reason on almost every level. And in any case, it's not the professor's job to keep every unpublished paper that creeps across her desk.

Now, admittedly, I'd like to know what Obama thought about US-Soviet arms talks when he was going to college, but I also can imagine that he has, as have I, changed that view, dramatically. When I was going to college, I thought it would be best to obliterate the Soviet Union - the sooner the better. I'll bet he didn't. History has proven his people wrong - so wrong that many modern historians wonder how we were able to survive with all those people trying to subvert the country. On the other hand, only Reagan guessed how fragile the soviets were, so who's to say?

One other point - when a college says they won't release papers, they are speaking, not as obstinate jackasses, but rather, as people dodging lawsuits. There are laws on the books that prevent a professor or college from releasing almost any kind of information about a student - even to people claiming to be parents! I know. I'm there. They lecture us teachers, at every opportunity, about not releasing information to unauthorized persons. Period.

There is no plot to withhold information about Obama's college thesis.

Incidentally, my thesis was about the absorption of the Roman state and ethos into the Roman Catholic Church. I wrote it at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto in 1971.

- Dick Anderson