Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is an American private Ivy League research university located in New York City, New York, United States. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. Today the university operates seven Columbia Global Centers overseas in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Santiago and Nairobi.

The university was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. After the American Revolutionary War, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. The University now operates under a 1787 charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees, and in 1896 it was further renamed Columbia University. That same year, the university's campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its location in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, where it occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (0.13 km²). The university encompasses twenty schools and is affiliated with numerous institutions, including Teachers College, Barnard College, and the Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America as well as the Juilliard School.

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Persian: محمود احمدی‌نژاد‎, Mahmūd Ahmadinezhād [mæhˈmuːd(-e) æhmædiːneˈʒɒːd] ( listen),English: /ɑːkməˈdɪnɨʒɒd/; born 28 October 1956) is the sixth and current President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the main political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, a coalition of conservative political groups in the country. An engineer and teacher from a poor background, Ahmadinejad joined the Office for Strengthening Unity after the Islamic Revolution. Appointed a provincial governor, he was removed after the election of President Mohammad Khatami and returned to teaching. Tehran's council elected him mayor in 2003. He took a religious hard line, reversing reforms of previous moderate mayors. His 2005 presidential campaign, supported by the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, garnered 62% of the runoff election votes, and he became President on 3 August 2005. His second presidency term ends on August 3, 2013. He is not eligible to run for another term under the current Iranian constitution.

Michelle Malkin (née Maglalang; born October 20, 1970) is an American conservative blogger, political commentator and author. Her weekly syndicated column appears in a number of newspapers and websites. She is a Fox News Channel contributor and has been a guest on MSNBC, C-SPAN, and national radio programs. Malkin has written four books published by Regnery Publishing.

Malkin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Philippine citizens Rafaela (née Perez) – a homemaker and teacher – and Apolo DeCastro Maglalang, who was then a physician-in-training. Several months prior to Malkin's birth, her parents had immigrated to the United States on an employer-sponsored visa. After her father finished his medical training, the family moved to Absecon, New Jersey. Malkin has a younger brother. She has described her parents as Reagan Republicans who were "not incredibly politically active."

Malkin, a Roman Catholic, attended Holy Spirit Roman Catholic High School, where she edited the school newspaper and aspired to become a concert pianist. Following her graduation in 1988, she enrolled at Oberlin College. Malkin originally planned to pursue a bachelor's degree in music, but changed her major to English. During her college years, she worked as a press inserter, tax preparation aide, and network news librarian. While attending Oberlin, Malkin was hired to write for an independent, right-of-center student newspaper by fellow student Jesse Dylan Malkin. Her first article for the paper heavily criticized Oberlin's affirmative action program and received a "hugely negative response" from other students on campus. She graduated in 1992 and later described her alma mater as "radically left-wing."

Megyn Marie Kelly (born November 18, 1970), formerly known as Megyn Kendall, is an American journalist and news anchor employed by the Fox News Channel. Kelly currently hosts America Live from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM EST live from the network’s New York City headquarters. She occasionally also co-hosts on America's Newsroom along with Bill Hemmer during the Fox Channel Network's Morning Line-Up at 10:00 AM EST. Since 2007, the two have hosted Fox News Channel's New Year's Eve special every year.

Kelly was nine years of age when her parents moved to Delmar, New York from Syracuse, New York. At Bethlehem Central High School, she played on the basketball and field hockey teams, as well as captaining the cheerleading squad. Kelly's father, who was on the staff of the University at Albany, died when she was 15. After high school, she pursued an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Syracuse University and later pursued a J.D. from Albany Law School; she served as an associate editor of the Albany Law Review while enrolled at Albany Law School. Kelly's first marriage to Daniel Kendall, an anesthesiologist, ended in divorce in 2006. In 2008 she married Douglas Brunt, the President and CEO of Authentium, at Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York. They have two children: Edward Yates Brunt (September 25, 2009) and Yardley Evans Brunt (April 15, 2011).