Monday, March 06, 2006

Yale Taliban

"I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale."

So said Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, who has been admitted as a student at Yale.

This story originally broke on February 26th in the New York Times Magazine. (The article is now behind the TimesSelect barrier and is available for a fee.)
OpinionJournal.com's John Fund has a couple of columns on this subject, here and here.

As Fund points out, Yale continues to block ROTC training from its campus and argues for the right of its law school to exclude military recruiters.

What did Rahmatullah's regime stand for? Hosts for Osama bin Laden and terrorism! Beheadings, amputations, mutilations. etc. And what about women's rights? Not!

And Yale is proud of its catch. The Times reported that Yale "had another foreigner of Rahmatullah's caliber apply for special-student status." Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions, told the Times that "we lost him to Harvard," and "I didn't want that to happen again."

A couple of unanswered questions: (1) Who at the State Department approved Rahmatullah's visa? (2) Who is the other foreigner accepted by Harvard?

9 comments:

Rick Ballard said...

Well, with FAIR v Rumsfeld unaminously decided, maybe Rahmatullah will be recruited to join the ROTC.

Luther said...

It will be interesting to see how tightly they hold to their values vs. the almighty buck after the "Fair" decision.

Does the decision affect ROTC as well, or just recruiter's?

OTOH, in the interest of equality they may have to find a taliban recruiter, they wouldn't have to go far.

cf said...

I just quickly scanned the opinion. Roberts writes very clearly--what a joy to read.

If you've a high school student at home, you might want to hand it to him/her to read.

There are so few examples of lucid writing these days. And the issues are not so complicated as to be beyond the reach of even a 9th grader.

Unknown said...

I have to say I don't find this all that surprising. My understanding is this guy was about 20 or 21 when the Taliban fell and never actually fought. He seems to be the eternal student.

cf said...

The "eternal student" went from fourth grade to Yale. How many people with a fourth grade education and a history of extreme anti-Semitism, misogyny and vicious anti-gay views do you suppose Yale admits?

Barry Dauphin said...

(2) Who is the other foreigner accepted by Harvard?

Vlad the Impaler.

Rick Ballard said...

Barry,

I was thinking Frank "Allahu Akbar" Bin Laden.

Vlad's a good boy. Just a little misunderstood - his upbringing, you know.

Barry Dauphin said...

Rick

That's right. I think Vlad went to Princeton.

chuck said...

Geez guys,

Give him a break. He's young, he hasn't been around much, give him a chance.

How about we kept out the left leaning jews and German refugees back in the thirties. How many here would vote for that? Oh, not so many, eh.