The Wall Street Journal has a blistering piece about Yale admitting Taliban spokesperson Ramatullah Hashemi as a student. It’s become quite clear that Yale’s absolutely ludicrous decision is turning into a well-deserved PR nightmare for them. The article makes this absolutely devastating charge:
A statement from Yale University, defending its decision to admit former Taliban spokesman Ramatullah Hashemi, explained that he had “escaped the wreckage of Afghanistan.” To anyone who is aware of the Taliban’s barbaric treatment of the Afghan people, such words are offensive–as if Mr. Hashemi were not himself part of the wrecking crew. It is even more disturbing to learn that, while Mr. Hashemi sailed through Yale’s admissions process, the school turned down the opportunity to enroll women who really did escape the wreckage of Afghanistan.
In 2002, Yale received a letter from Paula Nirschel, the founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. The purpose of the organization, begun in that year, was to match young women in post-Taliban Afghanistan to U.S. colleges, where they could pursue a degree. Ms. Nirschel asked Yale if it wanted to award a spot in its next entering class to an Afghan woman. Yale declined.
Yale deserves this black eye. Hashemi may bring experience to Yale – but that experience consists of murdering women for wearing cosmetics, collapsing walls on homosexuals, and being part of one of the most singularly oppressive regimes in our times. What can Hashemi truly contribute to Yale? In Comparative Religion could he espouse why all those who do not follow Islam are apostates? In Art History can he explain on the best locations to place explosives to knock down ancient statues of Buddha? In Women’s Studies can he explain about how liberating it is to never be allowed to leave the home without male escort?
The height of the hypocrisy here far dwarfs any ivory tower.
I was once under the naïve impression that academia was about the free exchange of ideas in a climate that supports human rights and tolerance. But clearly that isn’t so for a shockingly large swath of academia. Instead it appears to be about cocooning oneself into a comfortably twisted ideology in which The Other – no matter how great an affront they present to the values of civilization – is held up as a model, and the very civilization which allowed the academy to flourish is frequently treated with contempt. By admitting Hashemi, Yale gives credence to a regime that slaughtered its own people and kept them in a state of perpetual fear.
This is something where all Yale students, from College Republicans to the Women’s Studies majors should find common cause. Why not make Mr. Hashemi feel more at home by having “Taliban Days” at Yale? How about a few fictional executions for co-eds who dare show a patch of skin on the soccer field? How about having the campus chapter of GLAAD be fictionally stoned to death in the middle of the quad? After all, if those are the values that Yale is willing to give tacit support to, why not celebrate them?
The audacity to call Mr. Hashemi someone who survived the wreckage of Afghanistan when there are Afghani women who deserve a chance to receive a world-class education and who suffered under the likes of Mr. Hashemi and his thoroughly repugnant government. Apparently when it comes between choosing between the truly oppressed and their oppressors, the Ivy Leage is too blind to tell the difference.
