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As the first Columbia College graduate prepares to take the oath of office for president, historians, journalists, public officials and many others are reaching for historical comparisons to both the man and the moment.

Is Barack Obama (CC'83) more like Franklin Delano Roosevelt? The similarities are striking. Each succeeds an unpopular Republican who oversaw a financial collapse. Each effectively channeled his message through the new media of the day—Roosevelt through radio, Obama through the Internet.

Or is the better comparison to Abraham Lincoln, another president who got his political start in the Illinois state legislature and later became renowned for his oratorical skills and the quality of his writing? Obama quoted Lincoln in his victory speech on election night and has spoken of reading Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on Lincoln's fractious cabinet.

Columbia faculty members are at the center of the discussion on Obama and his role, both historical and history-making. After Election Day, Columbia professors Eric Foner of the history department and Patricia Williams of the law school appeared on Bill Moyers' PBS show to discuss Obama's victory—on the same night, Provost Alan Brinkley appeared on Charlie Rose with fellow historian Michael Beschloss and New Yorker editor David Remnick. Foner joined Rose a week later, as part of an hour-long conversation about Obama and Lincoln.

Remarkably, a week apart in mid-November the University hosted two long-planned historical conferences: On Nov. 15, there was a conference cosponsored with The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute on the theme "Restoring America Through a New New Deal." And on Nov. 22, the American Studies department sponsors a public symposium in Low Library rotunda marking the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth in 1809 and the publication of Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World, edited by Foner, who is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History. More than a dozen historians are speaking on topics ranging from "Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Rights of Black Americans" to "Abraham Lincoln, Commander in Chief."

In FDR's case, Columbia played its own role in New Deal history, with a number of prominent faculty members serving on his informal "brain trust" of academics, who advised Roosevelt when he was New York governor and later president. They included Rexford Tugwell, later Roosevelt's undersecretary of agriculture; law professor Raymond Moley, who was described by Time magazine in 1933 as Roosevelt's closest adviser and was named by Roosevelt to be an assistant secretary of state; and law professor A.A. Berle, a faculty member (from 1927 to 1963) and economic theorist who helped craft Depression-era banking and securities law reforms. Roosevelt also appointed Columbia law professor William O. Douglas as chair of the fledgling Securities and Exchange Commission in 1937 and two years later to the U.S. Supreme Court. Both FDR and his cousin Theodore Roosevelt attended the law school but left before graduating; they were recently granted posthumous degrees.

The president-elect's inner circle also includes a number of Columbians, including former assistant attorney general Eric Holder (CC'73,LAW'76) and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (LAW'88), who jointly led the vice-presidential selection committee; and technology adviser Julius Genachowski (CC'85).

Brinkley, a leading historian of the New Deal, told The Record that Obama's victory is remarkable for reasons beyond his mixed-race heritage. "Not since 1932 has the United States faced such a severe financial crisis—a crisis that could ripple through the nation and the world and create severe social, economic and political problems," Brinkley said. Lincoln and Roosevelt illustrate how great crises can be great opportunities for new presidents, he added, "but great crises can also be the undoing of presidents who might otherwise have been successful. Obama has many of the qualities of temperament and discipline that are important to a president. And he has, at least for now, another far greater asset, the support and confidence of a large majority of the American people, who see in him the possibility of transformative leadership."

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