[55] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[56] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.[57][58]

External video Derrick Bell threatens to leave Harvard, April 24, 1990, 11:34, Boston TV Digital Archive[59] Student Barack Obama introduces Professor Derrick Bell starting at 6:25.
Despite being offered a full scholarship to Northwestern University School of Law, Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988, living in nearby Somerville, Massachusetts.[60] He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year,[61] president of the journal in his second year,[55][62] and research assistant to the constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe while at Harvard.[63] During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.