Barack Hussein Obama II (/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/ ⓘ bə-RAHK hoo-SAYN oh-BAH-mə;[1] born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African-American president of the United States. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and as a civil rights lawyer and university lecturer.
Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He graduated from Columbia University in 1983 with a B.A. in Political Science and later worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In 1988, Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He became a civil rights attorney and an academic, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He also went into elective politics. Obama represented the 13th district in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004, when he successfully ran for the U.S. Senate. In 2008, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, he was nominated by the Democratic Party for president and chose Joe Biden as his running mate. Obama was elected president, defeating Republican nominee John McCain in the presidential election and was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Nine months later he was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a decision that drew a mixture of praise and criticism.
