Obama's First Fulltime Job: a Company with Ties to the SDS
Politics | Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 10:47:28 am PST
Obama’s first fulltime employer, Business International, had substantial SDS ties in the 1960s. After graduating from Columbia in 1983, Obama’s first fulltime job was to work for an international business newsletter firm, Business International. From all accounts (including Obama’s), it appears that this company was business-oriented and mainstream politically, unlike his other fulltime employers before law school.
For that reason, it is a strange coincidence that in the 1960s, Business International also appears to have had closer ties to the SDS than any other American business firm. Yet, because Obama’s college concentration within political science was in international relations, the coincidence may not be as strange as it first appears.
I learned this yesterday when, for a project I’m doing, I had occasion to read Carl Oglesby’s memoir of his days as a leader of the SDS in the 1960s, Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement. Oglesby, who was President of SDS in 1966 and 1967, led the largely nonviolent wing of the group in its battles with the violent revolutionary wing (which became the Weathermen). SDS at the time had three national secretaries, two of which were Bernardine Dohrn and Mike Klonsky. Dohrn and Klonsky led the attack on Oglesby and his radical (yet liberal) vision. Although the broad difference in philosophy was the overarching reason for the split, the chief bone of contention at the time was Oglesby’s development of SDS contacts with Business International, a business information and consulting service led by Eldredge Haynes. Indeed, Haynes or Business International are discussed on over 25 pages of Oglesby’s memoir, and they are part of the subtext of many more pages.
