Yale’s Taliban: defending the indefensible, part I

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Yale’s Taliban: defending the indefensible, part I

Mar 30, 2006

by Clinton W. Taylor

Yale is in a dilemma. It made a huge, indefensible blunder when it admitted the senior advisor to Mullah Omar as a special student, and now it’s taking hits from students, from alumni, and from the media.

How can Yale spin its way out of this one? They have at their fingertips an invaluable resource, someone who made a career of defending the indefensible. In fact, this PR flack extraordinaire was so successful that he was reportedly on the fast track to become the Taliban’s next foreign minister. Unfortunately for Yale, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi isn’t talking.

Others are taking up for Yale, but the results aren’t convincing anyone. Let’s take a look at some of the excuses offered on Yale’s behalf.

The Non-partisan Defense

Yale officials don’t like all the politics surrounding Mr. Rahmatullah’s admission. According to Yale Herald reporter Yotam Barkai, who interviewed some of Yale’s brass, they “believe that alumni donations should not be used as a form of political activism.â€

“Oftentimes, the people who are most generous understand the University well and they know that we are an educational, not a political institution,†Yale’s Vice President for Development Inge Reichenbach told the Herald.

Yale College Dean Peter Salovey added, “What is remarkable about our alumni is they continue to be generous even when something happens on campus with which they might not agree.â€

Funny, because I believe that college admissions should not be “used as a form of political activismâ€. Especially political activism that supports our enemy’s officials during a live, shooting war. In fact, it takes an amazing degree of gall for Yale administrators to make such a blatantly political admissions decision, and then to blame the alumni for politicizing the process.

The Jim Sleeper Defense

Yale lecturer in Political Science Jim Sleeper has hinted darkly that there is some intelligence/CIA angle on the Boola Boola Mullah’s presence at Yale. In an open letter to the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, who has been doggedly investigating this issue, Sleeper urges him:

W]hy don’t you look a little more deeply than you did into the provenance and motives of Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi’s patron Mike Hoover, who commended him to Yale's admissions office? Why don’t you ask if Rahmatullah's enrollment was facilitated less by the "diversity" ethos than by yet another of Yale conservatives' recent, bumbling efforts to revive the university's old conduit to national intelligence and to framing grandiose "grand strategies?"

First, if Mr. Sleeper has some reason to believe that is the case, it is a dreadfully irresponsible charge to make. If Mr. Rahmatullah were being groomed to be a CIA asset, Mr. Sleeper’s braying about it can only serve to compromise his mission.

But whether or not there is an intelligence angle to this story, the mere rumor that Mr. Rahmatullah is some sort of spy will endanger his life when he does return to Afghanistan—and unlike Valerie Plame Wilson, there is every reason to think Mr. Rahmatullah will be going abroad once more. Regardless of Mr. Rahmatullah’s true status, he has been branded an American intelligence asset now.

The irony of Mr. Sleeper’s accusations is that they are almost certainly baseless. Granted, Yale has historically had links to the intelligence community—detailed thoroughly in Robin Winks’ book Cloak and Gown—but the notion that CIA agents are parachuting into Mazar-e-Sharif with briefcases full of Yale acceptance letters, passing them out to willing defectors and warlords, does not pass the smell test. Having worked in Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions for three and a half years, I can say pretty confidently that the idea is ludicrous. Yale’s admissions office is not interested in accommodating the CIA’s nation-building ventures.

Besides which, if this was some sort of spook deal, why would Mr. Rahmatullah suddenly start interviewing for a long, smoochy biopic in the New York Times Magazine? Why would then-Dean of Admissions Richard Shaw pop up in the interview as well? And why would the fellow who brought him to America, CBS cameraman and stuntman Mike Hoover, show up to defend him on Fox News, or brag about his two CIA debriefs to Outside Magazine in 1996?

Sleeper claims that Hoover has contacts at the CIA. Hoover also quite obviously has contacts to the Taliban, since he was able to operate in Afghanistan under their reign and even—perhaps as a quid pro quo, as with CNN’s Eason Jordan?—arranged Rahmatullah’s 2001 tour of the United States, which was an extended apologia for how the Taliban made the trains run on time.

Yet just because of those contacts, no one on the left would seriously entertain the thought that Mr. Hoover some sort of Taliban mole. I don’t either; I simply think Mr. Hoover and his compatriots at the International Education Foundation are simply besotted by a one-world faith that educating the Taliban will magically solve all our problems. In fact, that is the next defense I’d like to address.

The Alan Colmes Defense

Fox News’ Alan Colmes asked me, liberal Yale alum (and Rahmatullah opposer) Christina Bost-Seaton, and Natalie Healy, mother of a SEAL killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the same question: isn’t this guy better off at Yale than he would be in a madrassa? He even asked Healy, “You don't want him back there with them [the Taliban] killing them [our children], do you?â€

What is fascinating about the Colmes defense is his presumption that but for the grace of a Yale education, Mr. Rahmatullah would be toting an RPG through Waziristan, picking off American troops. Mr. Colmes, usually a reasonable sort of liberal, apparently sees some danger in Mr. Rahmatullah that the rest of us do not (as I’ve said from the beginning, I don’t think he’s a terrorist, but merely an apologist for them). But if Mr. Colmes honestly believes that Mr. Rahmatullah is that close to snapping and becoming a terrorist, he should be arguing that the place for him is certainly not at Yale, but in detention.

In any case, education is important, but it is not magic. Exposure to a liberal arts curriculum—even to a “great books†curriculum—broadens minds, changes lives in unpredictable ways, and makes better citizens, but it cannot transform a hardened jihadist into a civic-minded scoutmaster.

For someone with an open mind, it might make a difference, but Mr. Rahmatullah is a Taliban ideologue, and as he has said at USC in 2001, “For the Taliban, ideology is everything.†Ironically, those who scoff at neoconservative efforts to democratize the Middle East are all about democratizing Mr. Rahmatullah. Somehow they think that discussing Diderot over calzones at Yorkside Pizza will overcome the murderous ideology that he helped manufacture and articulate, and that he was still defending on September 12, 2001.

Yale couldn’t even succeed in making me into a liberal, though it took off a few rough edges. Does anyone think Yale could do any better for someone who proudly told reporters why Christian missionaries must be tried—and possibly face capital punishment—for proselytizing? Does this sound like someone open to the give-and-take of academic discourse? It may succeed in smoothing out his delivery a bit, but given that we are in a shooting war with his regime, how can that be a good thing?

There is more defense of the indefensible going on. The Good Lord and Townhall’s editors willing, I will post part two of this column in a day or two, answering the rest of the Boola Boola Mullah’s defenders.

Clint Taylor is a '96 Yale alumnus.

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cant wait for part 2 , should be a real page turner

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cant wait for part 2 , should be a real page turner

The above statement has been brought to you by the Society for Mentally Defective Imbeciles and Brain Dead Jerkoffs. Donations are being accepted to build a "comfortable" commune for these hopeless morons, where they can be surrounded by fellow misfits, play with colorful building blocks, eat Twinkies, and have their reproduction capabilities terminated. Day tours will also be available to the viewing public where children can see what happens without a proper education and some self pride. Please donate what you can to this worthy cause. Please call ahead for reservations to see the main attraction-bxbomb.

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TALIBAN AT YALE - AND HARVARD?

March 31, 2006 -- MAYBE Yale isn't the only elite university with a "Tali ban Man" problem.

Yale is taking flak for making a student out of an ex-Taliban spokesman. Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi once toured America defending the hideous regime that pulled out women's fingernails for the "crime" of wearing nail polish. The Taliban also barred girls from school, banned women from working, stoned adulterers to death and used its soccer stadium for mass executions.

In a scene that landed in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," Rahmatullah confronted an American woman who'd showed up to protest his speech wearing the burqa imposed by the Taliban on Afghan women - a head-to-toe sacklike garment with just an eye slit:

"I'm really sorry to your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you," gibed Rahmatullah.

Nice to know what earns you Yale entry these days.

The New York Times Magazine first revealed Taliban Man's sweetheart deal with Yale a month ago. Richard Shaw, the Yale dean who decided that Rahmatullah was Yale material, bizarrely invoked the school's historic rival to explain it, telling the Times that Yale's admissions office once had "another foreigner of Rahmatullah's caliber" apply for special-student status but "We lost him to Harvard. I didn't want that to happen again."

So, is it true that Harvard also accepted a Taliban-style student - a high official from an outlaw regime?

Shaw, now Stanford University's admissions dean, won't say. He has gone deep inside the bunker. The recorded message in his office says his assistant will return calls - but detailed messages asking if he'd truly claimed to have lost a Taliban-type applicant to Harvard drew no callback.

Yale is also mum. It took spokesman Tom Conroy two days to come up with a non-answer - he refused to say whether Yale has any records to back up Shaw's claim. "If [shaw] said he lost an applicant that he wanted to Harvard, I'm sure he was telling the truth," was all Conroy would say.

Meanwhile, as The Wall Street Journal revealed last week, Yale has declined to admit Afghan women who were Taliban victims: It snubbed a request from the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women (IEAW.org), which brings Afghan women to U.S. colleges.

Conroy, the Yale spokesman, declined to say why Rahmatullah - whose formal education ended in fourth grade - was somehow more qualified or deserving than those women.

What about Harvard? You might think the college would be eager to deny Shaw's charge - to insist that it would of course reject a student whose prime "qualification" was working for one of the most odious regimes on the face of the earth.

Wrong.

It took Harvard four days to come up with its weasel words. Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Bob Mitchell finally returned a call - at the direction of university spokesman Joe Wrinn. But Mitchell adamantly refused to answer, claiming it would violate university policy to say if Harvard had admitted a Taliban-type applicant.

"I can't say anything. We do not discuss applicants," Mitchell said, sounding peeved that he'd even had to return the call.

Which wasn't a total surprise. Both Yale and Harvard - indeed, many if not most elite U.S. universities - seem to feel they aren't answerable to anyone, that anyone who questions them has unmitigated gall. For example, when a few Yale grads publicly complained about the admissio of Taliban Man, an assistant director of fundraising at Yale Law School sent them an angry e-mail suggesting they're "retarded."

Harvard's stonewall leaves us with no clear answer on whether it also admitted a Taliban type. But it is clear is that Harvard, like Yale, feels there's nothing shameful about admitting a Taliban Man.

Also like Yale, Harvard hasn't seen fit to admit one of the Afghan women. (Among those that have are Duke, Mt. Holyoke and New Jersey's Montclair State University.)

The good news is that those 20 Afghan women are doing well at 10 colleges across America, even though the Ivy League couldn't be bothered to admit them. All have averages of at least 3.5.

At Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, two Afghan women tutored high school students as part of their community service.

Imagine - women who Rahmatullah's Taliban wanted to bar from school are now helping American kids learn to read. Meanwhile, America's most elite schools prefer to educate the enemy.

Deborah Orin, The Post's Washington bureau chief, is a Harvard grad.

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Foreign Exchange

Why did Yale slam the door on Afghan women?

Friday, March 24, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

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 was not alone. Of the more than 2,000 schools contacted by Mrs. Nirschel, only three signed up right away: Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, Notre Dame College in New Hampshire and the University of Montana, Missoula. Four years later, the program enrolls 20 students at 10 universities, listed in the table nearby.

Not Yale

Schools participating in the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women

Duke University, N.C.

Juniata College, Pa.

Kennesaw State University, Ga.

Middlebury College, Vt.

Montclair State University, N.J.

Mount Holyoke College, Mass.

Roger Williams University, R.I.

Simmons College, Mass.

University of Montana, Missoula

University of Richmond, Va.

Mrs. Nirschel, it should be noted, had an "in" at Roger Williams. Her husband, Roy, is the president. Mr. Nirschel recalls that after 9/11 his wife mourned not only for the American victims but for the people of Afghanistan, whose brutal regime had helped to sponsor al Qaeda. Mr. Nirschel admits that his first reaction, upon hearing his wife's concern, was to say that they should just give to a charity. But Mrs. Nirschel asked whether he, as university president, could give a scholarship to an Afghan woman instead. He was doubtful at first about the practicality of the idea but eventually agreed. "My wife can be very persuasive," he told us.

Mrs. Nirschel, who has been a homemaker for most of the past three decades, set up the program to find suitable college-ready candidates and pay their travel expenses to the U.S. But the colleges themselves were asked to cover tuition, room and board. Mrs. Nirschel did not want the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women to be treated as a chance to "escape." The program requires that its students return to Afghanistan each summer to work for an organization involved in rebuilding the country. And they must go home at the end of their four years in the U.S.

Aren't the students tempted to remain in this land of plenty? Nadima Sahar, who will graduate from Roger Williams in May with a political science degree, says: "Staying here has never crossed my mind. . . . We are responsible for making sure our country succeeds, so that future generations don't face problems we did." Mrs. Nirschel expects a "trickle-down effect." The returning students will "influence their family, their community and the country at large." Clearly there is more going on here than the usual search for campus "diversity."

These women require no remedial classes, by the way. They come prepared, many having huddled in basements secretly imbibing what information they could from male relatives or having lived in Pakistani refugee camps to gain access to schools. Not one of them has a GPA below 3.5.

Arezo Kohistani, now attending Roger Williams, tells us that she had planned to major in journalism. But she changed her focus when several reporters were assassinated in Afghanistan during her first semester. Stories like this remind us that her country has a long road ahead. The graduates of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women will surely help to speed it along the way.

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Taliban Man at Yale

The story thus far.

John Fund

Thursday, March 23, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last month Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard; today Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi will speak by video to a conference at Columbia University that his regime is cosponsoring. (Columbia won't answer questions about how much funding it got from Libya or what implied strings were attached.) Then there's Yale, which for three weeks has refused to make any comment or defense beyond a vague 144-word statement about its decision to admit Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi--a former ambassador-at-large of the murderous Afghan Taliban--as a special student.

The three backers of the foundation that, along with Yale, is subsidizing Mr. Hashemi's tuition have told the Yale Daily News that they are withdrawing their support. But the university remains mute and paralyzed. "The intelligentsia haven't told Yalies what to think yet, because even they haven't made up their minds," says Daniel Gelernter, a Yale freshman whose father is a Yale professor. He clearly has: He calls the Taliban "an evil and macabre terrorist group. . . . The fact that Hashemi didn't do actual killing does not absolve him. Goebbels didn't shoot anyone either."

Universities are places where free inquiry, debate and information sharing are supposed to be guiding lights. In reality, the ivory towers too often now resemble dark castles, which raise their drawbridges at the first hint of criticism or scrutiny. Never has the moat separating elite universities from the rest of America been wider than in the case of Yale's Taliban Man.

In justifying its grant of a place to Mr. Hashemi, Yale has cited his approval by the State Department. And Yale's sole official statement says it hopes "his courses help him understand the broader context for the conflicts that led to the creation of the Taliban and to its fall. . . . Universities are places that must strive to increase understanding." That justification is unsettling to two women who will join voices at Yale tonight. Natalie Healy lost her Navy SEAL son Dan in Afghanistan last year when a Taliban rocket hit his helicopter. Ms. Healy, who notes that her son had four children of his own, is appalled at Yale's new student. "Lots of people could benefit from a Yale education, so why reward this man who was part of the group that killed Dan?" she told me. "I want to tell [Yale President] Richard Levin that his not allowing ROTC on campus is one thing, but welcoming a former member of the Taliban is deeply insulting to families who have children fighting them right now."

Ten days ago Ms. Healy met Malalai Joya, a member of Afghanistan's parliament, when she spoke near her home in Exeter, N.H. Tonight, Ms. Joya will speak at Yale on behalf of the Afghan Women's Mission. She is appalled that many people have forgotten the crimes of the Taliban, and was surprised to hear that Mr. Hashemi, who, like her, is 27 years old, is attending Yale. "He should apologize to my people and expose what he and others did under the Taliban," she told me. "He knew very well what criminal acts they committed; he was not too young to know. It would be better if he faced a court of justice than be a student at Yale University."

Mr. Hashemi probably won't be attending Ms. Joya's lecture tonight. He has dodged reporters for three weeks, ever since his presence at Yale was revealed in a cover story in the New York Times Magazine. Some claim he has fully repented his Taliban past, but in his sole recent interview--with the Times of London--he acknowledged he'd done poorly in his class "Terrorism: Past, Present and Future," attributing that to his disgust with the textbooks: "They would say the Taliban were the same as al Qaeda." At the same time, Mr. Hashemi won't explain an essay he wrote late last year in which he called Israel "an American al Qaeda" aimed at the Arab world. When asked about the Taliban's public executions in Kabul's soccer stadium, he quipped: "There were also executions happening in Texas."

Given his record as a Taliban apologist, Mr. Hashemi has told friends he is stunned Yale didn't look more closely into his curriculum vitae. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay," he told the New York Times. So how did he end up in the Ivy League? Questions start at the State Department's door. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's border security panel, has asked the State Department and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to explain exactly how Mr. Hashemi got an F-1 student visa. Yale's decision tree is clearer. Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions until he took the same post at Stanford last year, told the New York Times that Yale had another foreigner of Mr. Hashemi's caliber apply but "we lost him to Harvard" and "I didn't want that to happen again." Mr. Shaw won't return phone calls now, but emails he's exchanged with others offer insights into his thinking.

The day after the New York Times profile appeared, Haym Benaroya, a professor at Rutgers, wrote to Mr. Shaw expressing disbelief that Mr. Hashemi, who has a fourth-grade education and a high school equivalency certificate, could be at Yale. Mr. Shaw replied that he indeed had "non-traditional roots [and] very little formal education but personal accomplishments that had significant impact." Mr. Benaroya was stupefied; did Mr. Shaw mean accomplishments that had a "positive impact, not terroristic and totalitarian impact"? Mr. Shaw responded: "Correct, and potential to make a positive difference in seeking ways towards peace and democracy. An education is a way toward understanding the complex nuances of world politics."

Back in the early 1990s, when he was dean of Yale College, Yale history professor Don Kagan warned about what he called the university's "mutual massage" between value-neutral professors and soft-minded students. He is even more critical now: "The range of debate on campus is more narrow than ever today, and the Taliban incident is a wake-up call that moral relativism is totally unexamined here. The ability of students to even think clearly about patriotism and values is being undermined by faculty members who believe that at heart every problem has a U.S. origin." Mr. Kagan isn't optimistic that Yale will respond to outside pressure. "They have a $15 billion endowment, and I know Yale's governing board is handpicked to lick the boots of the president," he told me. "The only way Yale officials can be embarrassed is if a major donor publicly declares he is no longer giving to them. Otherwise, they simply don't care what the outside world thinks."

But there may be one other source of worry for Yale. Mr. Hashemi told the New York Times that he will apply next month for sophomore status in Yale's full-degree program starting next fall. An admissions official told me Yale's plan all along was to do just that if his grades were acceptable. But next week, Yale will mail out 19,300 rejection letters to those who applied to be in its class of 2010. "I can't imagine it'll be easy for Yale to convince those it rejects that the Taliban student isn't taking a place they could have had," a former Yale administrator told me.

Former Yale president Benno Schmidt says admitting Mr. Hashemi is an exercise in "amorality and cynicism." He told me that "diversity simply cannot be allowed to trump all moral considerations." It's not as if Yale can't muster moral indignation. Yale is divesting from Sudan, responding to pressure from student activists and labor unions. But when it comes to a former Taliban official, there is a desire to move on.

A case in point is Amy Aaland, executive director of Yale's Slifka Center for Jewish Life, where Mr. Hashemi takes his meals (Kosher complies with Islamic dietary laws). When I asked her if any of the revelations about his past disturb her, she noted that he was "very, very young" when he had been a Taliban official, and that "it's not like the Taliban attacked this country." I asked about the Taliban's decree in May 2001 that all non-Muslims--chiefly Hindus--had to wear yellow badges. The order, reminiscent of the Nazis, was met with global censure. A reporter then in Kabul recalls Mr. Hashemi had no trouble defending the decree as a protection for minorities against punishment by the religious police "until I pointed out it also required non-Muslims to move out of housing they shared with Muslims within three days; he didn't have a coherent response to that." Ms. Aaland absorbed all that I told her, and replied: "I don't expect learning to happen overnight." She still thought that "just living here, [Mr. Hashemi] can learn values and ideals from our society."

There is a line beyond which tolerance and political correctness become willful blindness. Eli Muller, a reporter for the Yale Daily News, was stunned back in 2000 when the lies of another Taliban spokesman who visited Yale "went nearly unchallenged." He concluded that the "moral overconfidence of Yale students makes them subject to manipulation by people who are genuinely evil." Today, you can say that about more than just some naïve students. You can add the administrators who abdicated their moral responsibility and admitted Mr. Hashemi.

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Yale's Taliban: Defending the indefensible, part II

Apr 3, 2006

by Clinton W. Taylor

Speaking at a Yale College Master’s Tea last week, Columbia Professor Todd Gitlin lamented the condition of the American Left: “There is currently a degree of intellectual paralysis, public fog, and collective and enthusiastic ignorance that defies comprehension,†he moaned.

Professor Gitlin may as well have been speaking of Yale itself these days. Upon learning that Yale admitted former Taliban “rising star†Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi as a non-degree special student, America became “pig-wrestling madâ€â€”to quote the usually less colorful Economist—and retaliated with a sustained barrage of invective, ridicule, and outrage that has lasted well over a month. Yale’s response was to issue a brief non-response, and then to stick its head in the sand. A promised debate on the subject at the Yale Political Union was ungracefully scuttled. The Yale Daily News, whose editors at first demanded answers from the Yale administration, is distancing itself from the controversy and, according to a student source, does not wish to cover the story further. Even the tour guides have been instructed not to discuss the issue.

Although Yale won’t defend itself, others are trying to do so. On Thursday, I examined three of the arguments Yale’s defenders are offering. There are more attempts to defend the indefensible, including a bizarre rationalization by the members of the Foundation that foots Mr. Rahamtullah’s bill.

The Academic Freedom Defense—The full title of William F. Buckley’s first book was God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom.†His subtitle referred to the invocation by Yale’s faculty of “academic freedom†as an excuse for subversive teaching. Even liberal notions of academic freedom were not without limits—Buckley pointed out that a faculty member who tried to justify Aryan supremacy would be fired. (As shown by the collaboration of some faculty in keeping deconstructionist professor Paul de Man’s Nazi past a secret, Mr. Buckley may have overestimated Yale’s opposition to fascism.)

Academic freedom has emerged again in the debate over the Yale Taliban. When the Yale Herald polled the student body about their thoughts on Mr. Rahmatullah, about fifty percent of those who chose to respond ( a third of the student body) declared their support of his presence. Their chief reason for doing so was “academic freedomâ€.

This contemporary sense of academic freedom appears to embrace a right to a Yale education, no matter how sordid one’s past. Yale is trying to be both meritocratic and relativist at the same time, and that is a very self-destructive notion for an elite college to embrace. The abnegation of good and evil in assessing applicants calls into question the purpose of selective admissions in the first place. If Yale can’t stir itself to exclude, say, a Klansman or a jihadist based on the evil organizations and ideology he has espoused, what does that say about the value of admission to Yale at all?

Underlying this plea that “academic freedom†ought to give Mr. Rahmatullah’s Taliban past a pass is, I think, a profound fear of rocking the boat. My friend Mark Oppenheimer has suggested that the decisions of Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions deserve more deference. Why should we go second-guessing their professional judgment about who ought to be a Yalie and who shouldn’t?

I used to agree with that idea. Before Mr. Rahmatullah came through, it was convenient to assume that admissions decisions were, if necessarily somewhat arbitrary, at least sincere and legitimate. Most, I’m certain, still are. But today Mark, and many of those Yale undergrads crying “academic freedomâ€, are asking me to pretend that a system that doesn’t even blink at the Taliban’s Deputy Foreign Minister—that in fact welcomes him precisely because of his “interesting†background—is above criticism. I can’t do that.

Emperor. Breeze. Flap. Flap. Flap.

The Tat Maxwell Defense—Mr. Rahmatullah was brought to America and to Yale by some folks in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, who have formed the “International Education Foundation†to promote this sort of cultural exchange. Along with Mike Hoover, the filmmaker and CBS cameraman who first met Mr. Rahmatullah in Afghanistan, the other members are Yale alum Robert Schuster and area mom Tatiana “Tat†Maxwell. Last week, Maxwell and Hoover talked about the controversy in their local paper.

I’ll respond to their personal criticisms of us later this week. But their defense of Yale and of Mr. Rahamtullah, that they’re not that bad, deserves a discussion here.

Upon learning of Hashemi’s presence at the university, two graduates, Clinton Taylor and Debbie Bookstaber, launched a campaign called “Nail Yale†to get people to mail false fingernails to the university to protest the Taliban’s treatment of women. They say the Taliban yanked fingernails of Afghan women who wore nail polish, a claim disputed by Jackson resident Tatiana Maxwell, president of the foundation set up to help pay for Hashemi’s education.

“It’s not even a legitimate, documented thing,†Maxwell said. “The Taliban certainly do some bad things ... but get your facts right.â€

The Yale alumni who have been featured on Fox News and MSNBC are “patently uninformed,†Maxwell said. “There’s no substance to what they are talking about.â€

Get your facts right, indeed, Ms. Maxwell. From Amnesty International:

On at least one occasion, such punishments have taken the form of bodily mutilation. A woman in the Khayr-Khana area of Kabul in October 1996 was reported as having the end of her thumb cut off by the Taleban. This ‘punishment’ was apparently meted out because the woman was caught wearing nail varnish.

But that’s just the beginning of Ms. Maxwell’s own spin on the Taliban and their spinmeister:

When she first heard about him she was extremely skeptical.

“Why would I want to listen to this Taliban?†she said, recalling her initial reaction.

Maxwell had been passionate about Afghanistan for years and supported the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. The independent organization of Afghan women fights for human rights and social justice in their country.

Off Maxwell went to the talk, armed with burkha and ready to face off with the mysterious Taliban guy. But after listening to him for a few minutes, she was “completely overtaken by him,†as he was “very intelligent, self-effacing and incredibly knowledgeable,†she said.

“He just seemed unbelievably credible,†Maxwell said.

The next day she attended another talk he gave at Teton County Library and invited him to come and stay with her....

Maxwell sees the education of Hashemi as a two-way street. “We can learn as much from him as he can learn from us,†she said.

As a society, there is much we can learn about Islam, the Taliban and this incredible rift between the United States and the Middle East, she said. “If not, we are just making assumptions,†Maxwell said.

Ms. Maxwell’s immediate, credulous acceptance of Mullah Omar’s personal advisor sounds pathologically naïve, but she is not the only one. Former Dean of Admissions for Yale Richard Shaw underwent a similar conversion when he first met Mr. Rahmatullah:

"When I first met him I was a little anxious,'' recalls Shaw, ... ''My perception was, 'It's the enemy!' But the interview with him was one of the most interesting I've ever had. I walked away with a sense: Whoa! This is a person to be reckoned with and who could educate us about the world."

Ms. Maxwell, to her credit, is active in charities and international organizations that aid refugees. Yet within a few minutes she was offering the spare room to someone who, in the summer of 2001, was justifying the capital trials of international aid workers, perhaps workers like those Ms. Maxwell supports.

Ms. Maxwell is rightly appalled by violence and hatred against homosexuals. When interviewed about a sculpture commemorating the murder of Matthew Shepherd, she responded that she was “moved†by the tribute to Shepherd: “I think the message is a wonderful one," she said. "It’s hard to go against ’Do not hate.’ The mere thought of a human being left on a fence is highly emotional for me." Yet after a dose of Mr. Rahmatullah’s blandishments, she helped pay for his freshman year at Yale.

The Taliban he advised and defended, of course, used to debate whether homosexuals should be pushed from a high wall to their deaths, or crushed by bulldozing the wall on top of them. Eventually the crushers won out. While a the idea of a human being on a fence may be highly emotional for Ms. Maxwell, the idea of a human being crushed beneath one must be somewhat less compelling.

After Dick Cheney’s recent hunting accident, Ms. Maxwell welcomed him to Jackson Hole wearing a sign that proclaimed, “Dick Cheney is not a straight shooter.†Yet, this guy in Mr. Rahmatullah’s Taliban is a straight shooter:

The Taliban certainly do some bad things, to use Ms. Maxwell’s modest phrase. Books have been written about the bizarre, totalitarian, misogynist, immiserating, barbaric nature of their reign. One of them, Ahmad Rashid’s Taliban, is referenced in the Jackson Hole article linked above, but only to make the point that Unocal might possibly stand to profit from a pipeline through Afghanistan. The litany of their horrors, with which both the reporter and Ms. Maxwell are obviously familiar, is omitted.

Uncanny, isn’t it? There’s a reason the Taliban sent this fellow abroad to lie for them. He’s good. He’s smooth. He plays limousine liberals like fine violins. Even now the Yale administration and most of its faculty and students—especially those on usually vocal left—are refusing to speak out against the evil he represented. Their ignorance is willful. Their gullibility is inexcusable. Their silence is damning.

In an effort to hold Yale accountable for its frighteningly bad judgment, we have urged concerned citizens to contact Yale’s President. He has raised the drawbridge, hoping the problem will go away. It won’t.

Yale is accountable, ultimately, to the members of its Corporation, which is meeting in mid-April. We have posted their mailing addresses—as well as some fax and e-mail contacts—on our blog here. We hope you will join us now in spreading the word and contacting as many members of the Yale Corporation as you can. Urge them to take responsibility for Yale’s blunder and put this ridiculous episode behind them.

Clint Taylor is a '96 Yale alumnus.

[igloo]

April 03, 2006, 7:34 a.m.

Get Him to Gitmo

Where Yale should send its Taliban student.

By Deroy Murdock

What must Sayed Ramatullah Hashemi think of his new school's insignia? Yale University's crest features the words "Light and Truth" emblazoned on an open book — in Hebrew. This must irk Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, the anti-Semitic, Islamofascist theocracy that misruled Afghanistan and hosted Osama bin Laden before 9/11.

Hashemi has generated headlines since it emerged that Yale admitted this former adviser to the notorious one-eyed Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. As Yale officials stated, Hashemi got in — despite his fourth-grade education and high-school equivalency certificate — because "Universities are places that must strive to increase understanding." The Wall Street Journal's John Fund reports that Yale, which bars military recruiters and the ROTC, discounted Hashemi's tuition 35 to 40 percent.

Click Here!

Imagine if Yale had accepted German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's top aide in 1942 to "increase understanding" of Nazism. Maybe Yale should add David Duke to the faculty to help students "increase understanding" of neo-Nazism.

This affair may show that "my enemy's enemy is my friend." Yale's politically correct administrators hate that reckless Texas cowboy George W. Bush (Yale, class of 1968). How better to smack him, while preening their liberal feathers like peacocks, than to welcome one of W's enemies?

Of course, Hashemi is not Bush's enemy, but America's. He is no Taliban defector, but someone largely unrepentant about fronting an autocracy whose diehards have killed 139 GIs while at war with this country, including one Wednesday in Helmand province.

Hashemi last year called Israel "an American al-Qaeda." He trivialized stonings of adulteresses in Kabul's soccer stadium by saying, "There were also executions in Texas." Reviewing Taliban public policy might "increase understanding" of Hashemi and the dictatorship he perpetuated.

As Yale alumnus Clinton Taylor has written, the Taliban was "a brutal regime of retrograde, misogynist, terrorist-abetting, drug-running, Buddha-blasting, gay-murdering, freedom-hating tyrants." They expressed their feminism by banning the education of girls over age 8, closing Afghanistan's women's university, banishing females from their jobs, and forcing them into burqas. They also celebrated diversity by fatally collapsing brick walls onto the heads of gay men.

Consider these other Taliban evils:

The Department to Propagate Virtue and Eliminate Vice abolished white paper bags, since they could have been made from recycled Korans.

It banned kites under the theory that time spent flying them should be devoted to reading the Koran.

Not unlike the Nazis' yellow stars for Jews, the Taliban ordered all non-Muslims to wear yellow badges in public.

In January 2001, Amnesty International reports, Taliban soldiers in Yakaolang fired rockets into a mosque as 73 women, children, and old men took sanctuary there.

According to the 2004 PBS documentary Afghanistan Unveiled, after blowing up a pair of huge, 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha in March 2001, the Taliban targeted the Hazara tribe in Bamiyan.

"From hundreds of women here, not one has a husband," said a local woman named Zainyab. "From 100 children, maybe just one still has two parents. They bulldozed houses with women and children inside. They cut off women's breasts."

Rather than support this outrage by donating to Yale, alumni Clinton Taylor and Debbie Bookstaber organized a protest called "Give Yale the Finger." They ask Yalies and concerned Americans to mail red, press-on fingernails (available at drugstores) to "President Richard Levin, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520." This should remind him that the Taliban extracted the fingernails of women who wore nail polish. Yale owes America an apology for giving aid and comfort to a former member of the government that gave aid and comfort to al-Qaeda as it plotted the September 11 massacre.

Meanwhile, Hashemi cannot believe his luck. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay," he told the New York Times. Good point! Who knows how much valuable intelligence remains in this former Taliban's skull?

Let's find out. The FBI should arrest this young Yalie and fly him south for spring break at Guantanamo. Then, Sayed Ramatullah Hashemi can help U.S. interrogators "increase understanding " of America's battlefield enemy.

[destruction]

How dare you Bash your king's alma-mata. I'm ashamed of you!