“He was a little older, seasoned,” Adkins said. “People looked up to him.”

Obama emerged as an activist during his second year at Harvard after controversy broke out surrounding the new dean, Robert C. Clark.

Clark had proposed to eliminate a branch of the advising program designed to help students find careers as public interest lawyers after graduation. Clark’s comments about these “guilt alleviating” programs drew national media attention.

Students, Obama among them, protested, organizing rallies and initiating a letter writing campaign to garner support from students and faculty members.

Obama gave several inspirational speeches that effectively galvanized students, according to Adkins.

He spoke with a distinctive style that reverberates in his speeches today. “He had a similar cadence, similar passion,” Adkins said. “It’s both passionate and analytical.”

After a period of student protests, Clark finally caved to student demands, reinstating public interest advising in 1990.

Although the controversy had died down, Obama remained active in the movement to improve the diversity of Harvard’s faculty.

“He was obviously attuned to the public issues of the day,” Adkins said.

THE SECOND TEACHER

Adkins describes Obama as a bright, engaged student with impressive intellectual ability.

During an introductory constitutional law class taught by professor Kathleen M. Sullivan, who now teaches at Stanford, Obama would consistently engage Sullivan with clear, pointed questions that challenged her interpretations.

Students, therefore, dubbed the course “the Obama-Sullivan Debate Class,” Adkins said.

“He was a dominating feature in the classroom,” Ogletree said.

Yet, Judson H. Miner, a Chicago civil rights lawyer who hired Obama immediately after he graduated, describes Obama as “self-assured but not at all cocky.”