In beginning to shape his cabinet, Barack Obama has selected two veterans of the telecom industry to help create the administrations high-tech policy priorities, including a former classmate of the President-elect.

Julius Genachowski, a classmate of Obama in law school who was former chief of council to the FCC, has been selected as one of the leaders of a group that will work on technology, innovation, and government reform for the administration, including net neutrality.

The Harvard Law School alumus has often been named as one of the top candidates for FCC chairman under the Obama administration.

Genachowski is credited with recommending that Obama use the power of the internet to organize support and is an advisor on the Obama-Biden Transition Project Advisory Board.

Also named to the group is Blair Levin, an investment analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, who has also been a front runner for the FCC chairmanship, and Sonal Shah, who heads the philanthropic arm of Google.

Obama has stated that technology will be one of the main agenda in his administration. Among the technology plans for the Obama-Biden administration are to protect the openness of the internet and encourage diversity in media ownership.

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Harvard University has become the third largest benefactor to Democrat candidate Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, it has been revealed.

According to the Boston Herald, academics at the school, where Obama was the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, had donated $501,489 as of August 31 this year.

Commenting on the decision to back Obama, Robert Brustein, who founded the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard said: “With me, it’s just the belief that this country has to be turned around.”

Earlier this month, a number of Obama’s former Harvard professors spoke about how they remember the potential future president and his wife from their law school days.

Meeting at a rally within the university’s law school, Professors Randall Kennedy and David Wilkins among others particularly discussed how Michelle Obama’s characteristics could be helping her husband’s presidential campaign now.

In other news, former secretary of state Colin Powell, a well-known Republican, has said he will support Barack Obama’s campaign for president, saying that he could “electrify the world.”

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With presidential candidate Barack Obama noted for his cool nature under pressure, a radio programme has spoken to his former law school colleagues in a bid to build a better profile of the potential leader.

Obama recently told 60 Minutes: ” One of the things I’m good at is getting people in a room with a bunch of different ideas – who sometimes violently disagree with each other – and finding common ground, and a sense of common direction.”

Researchers from National Public Radio’s All Things Considered programme found that this may not be a new trait, with Obama having been the first black president of the Law Review at Harvard Law School.

His former classmate Brad Berenson told the programme that Obama never took sides, but rather was a negotiator even then and it helped him to build his unflappable reputation, which may take him to the White House.

Obama – whose campaign mantra is ‘No Drama Obama’ – has said he intends to help Africa get out of poverty if he gets into power, aiming to eliminate malaria within seven years.

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Barack Obama’s comprehensive and ambitious plans to reform the U.S. education system have been attributed to his experiences in law school and as a community organizer.

In Mr Obama’s campaign, he states he will rewrite the federal law to offer more help to high-need schools, as well as expanding early childhood education as opposed to providing more remedial classes for older students, the New York Times reports.

This is thought to be due to him witnessing a shortage of textbooks and teachers while working as a community organizer in Chicago in the mid-1980s.

After graduating from Columbia University, he decided to take this role on Chicago’s far south side, focusing on the development of black city neighborhoods.

He also took classes on school issues when he attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1991.

Mr Obama’s former teacher Christopher Edley said: “Barack became committed to the notion that progress in school reform can’t come through volunteerism and professional aspiration alone.”

He added that Mr Obama became aware while at law school that reform must be achieved through a regulatory structure that tackles failure.

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