I am a graduate of the Indiana University School of Law, Class of 1970, and winner of the U.S. Law Week Award for the most scholastic progress in the senior class. After graduation, I served in the U.S. Peace Corps as a legal adviser to the government of Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia.\nFor the past 30 years I have been living and working as a university professor in South Korea. My wife is Korean and we have two daughters, one who just finished her second tour of duty in Iraq as a U.S. Marine.\nLiving here with my girls, observing them growing up in another culture while attending international schools, I know the mind of a biracial child. When I see and hear Barack Obama speak on daily news programs over the Internet, I see my own children. I see a person who is both White and Black, just as my children are both White and Asian. This incredible gift means they can see out of both pairs of eyes. \nThis is what I see in Barack Obama, the great ability to know both Black and White, to be either and both at the same time. In this way, I see someone who can be objective and a great unifier in America. The fact that his mother is White is being forgotten. But this must be remembered now. He is not a Black man only, or a White man only, he is a Cosmopolitan man. As such, he is best suited to understand and unite all of America and also to communicate America’s ideals and needs to other peoples across the world.\nBarack does not have to nuke the women and children of Iran or “stand up to China.” Such an approach is the perfect formula for destroying the world through war. Instead, he has the ability and stature to resolve disputes diplomatically. The leaders of Iran and China and other countries worldwide will open up to listen to him, and cooperate with him to resolve disputes and make for a peaceful planet. He can do this because of his remarkable personality and background.\nBarack reminds me of a classmate at Indiana University School of Law in 1969. I was taking a class called Legal Aspects of Nation Building and some African graduate students attended. One was named George Hansen and he was from Ghana. When one of the other African students would express an incomplete opinion on an issue, instead of attacking him, he would say, “Oh, what you mean to say is this ... ” Or, “What you are trying to say is this ... ” This is exactly how Barack Obama is, and how he would like others to be.\nSo I have come home in spirit to my alma mater, the Indiana University which so enriched me. What I learned in law school from that African student I’ve returned to share with you.
Fred Jeremy Seligson, J.D.\nSeoul, South Korea
