Hashemi at yale

Hashemi
at Yale


The ultimate in diversity.
5/19/2006

Like
other leading universities, Yale attracts students from all over the
world. But in Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, it may have gotten more than
it bargained for, said Alan Finder in The New York Times.
Hashemi, who’s been taking courses at Yale since last summer, is
a onetime spokesman for Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime.
Prior to Sept. 11, he toured the U.S. as a “roving
diplomat” who defended his government’s Islamic
fundamentalist policies, including its medieval repression of women.
Now, Hashemi has applied to a formal Yale degree program, and the
campus community is in an uproar. “It’s a betrayal of
Yale’s core values,” says alumnus Clint Taylor, founder of
a blog devoted to opposing Hashemi’s admission.
“We’re still at war with the Taliban. They’re
massacring schoolteachers in Afghanistan and fighting American
soldiers.”



Hashemi’s admission, unfortunately, may actually reflect Yale’s core values, said John Fund in The American Spectator.
“Richard Shaw, Yale’s former admissions dean, has all but
admitted that Hashemi got in precisely because of his Taliban
background.” It may seem nuts, but in the politically correct
world of academia, this is called diversity. What could be more
open-minded, more progressive, than enrolling an apologist for the
regime that harbored Osama bin Laden and made 9/11 possible? Yale
contends Hashemi has reformed his views, but he hasn’t, said Natalie Healy in the New York Daily News.
Last year, he wrote an essay that called Israel “an American al
Qaida.” When someone asked him about the Taliban’s public
stoning of adulterers, he retorted, “There were also executions
happening in Texas.” As the mother of a Navy SEAL killed by the
Taliban, I’m astonished that one of America’s most
prestigious colleges can’t find a student more worthy than this
thug.



Hashemi is no thug, said USA Today in an
editorial. He may still be critical of some U.S. policies, but he
“no longer sees the world framed as a religious conflict”
between righteous Muslims and evil infidels. That’s why the State
Department has officially cleared Hashemi to study here. Lately,
he’s been telling friends that he wants to return to Afghanistan
to promote education—without which, he says, no country can make
a transition to democracy. Earlier this year, he told a reporter,
“You have to be reasonable to live in America. Back home, you can
win any argument if you bring up the Islamic argument.” If
Yale’s admissions staff is wise, they’ll resist the
“bullying protesters,” and welcome Hashemi as a living
symbol of “the value of cultural exchange.”