On Sunday I read with some amazement in the New York Times Magazine the story of Rahmatullah Hashemi, former Taliban spokesman and now a student at Yale. In Opinion Journal John Fund explains just what is so wrong with this -- which never seemed to occur to the New Duranty Times:
Never has an article made me blink with astonishment as much as when I read in yesterday's New York Times magazine that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former ambassador-at-large for the Taliban, is now studying at Yale on a U.S. student visa. This is taking the obsession that U.S. universities have with promoting diversity a bit too far.Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last week Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard when it became clear he would lose a no-confidence vote held by politically correct faculty members furious at his efforts to allow ROTC on campus, his opposition to a drive to have Harvard divest itself of corporate investments in Israel, and his efforts to make professors work harder. Now Yale is giving a first-class education to an erstwhile high official in one of the most evil regimes of the latter half of the 20th century--the government that harbored the terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001....
I don't believe Mr. Rahmatullah had direct knowledge of the 9/11 plot, and I don't think he has ever killed anyone. I can appreciate that he is trying to rebuild his life. But he willingly and cheerfully served an evil regime in a manner that would have made Goebbels proud. That he was 22 at the time is little of an excuse. There are many poor, bright students--American and foreign alike--who would jump at the opportunity to attend Yale. Why should Mr. Rahmatullah go to the line ahead of all of them? That's a question Yale alumni should ask when their alma mater comes looking for contributions.
Hopefully he will get edumacated like G W Bush.
Mmmm,,,is there not something he could be detained or jailed for??
Get used to it Mr. Fund. This is just one more consequence of the open borders that you and your colleagues at the Wall Street Journal so enthusiastically support.
Freewoman, hold your tongue!
"Hashemi, who now has two children and a wife living in Pakistan, is known by many nationally for his 30-second appearance in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," in which he tells a woman who aggressively questions the Taliban's stance toward women's rights, "I'm really sorry to your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you."
If you haven't noticed, all persons graduating from Yale are forced to undergo lobotomy prior to being awarded their prestigious degree.
That done, Hashemi might end up being the first Unicorn ever captured.
I read the original article in the NYTimes. Don't get me wrong; I look at it as a hagiographic piece that smacks more than a bit of "gee, poor kid really deserves a chance at life; he was so young when he hooked up with the Taliban and didn't know what he was getting into".
There was one quote of Ramatullah's that I thought interesting, though.
'"You have to be reasonable to live in America," he said. "Everything here is based on reason. Even the essays you write for class. Back home you have to talk about religion and culture, and you can win any argument if you bring up the Islamic argument. You can't reason against religion. But you cannot change Afghanistan overnight. You can't bring the Enlightenment overnight."'
Long term, if there's ever to be anything less than a "clash of civilizations" between Islamist countries & others, it can only come about by recognizing the role of reason in living as human beings. The message has to be carried to them somehow, & most likely can only be successfully brought by "their own". Whether Ramatullah is one of those who do, or not, remains to be seen.
I am awfully glad to see that we, the taxpayers, are not funding his education, though.
"I am awfully glad to see that we, the taxpayers, are not funding his education, though."
-- from a posting above
You are. If he receives a free education from Yale, or from some charitable foundation, then you as a taxpayer are helping in a small way to fund that education as well. Why? Because any 501(c)(3) allows contributions to be tax-deductible. That means whenever anyone gives to any 501(c)(3) organization, that person is lowering his taxes, and over time, that must cause an inexorable rise in all other taxes, in the tax tables themselves. Everything connects.
He should be sharing a cell with John Walker Lynd.
JLP
Some dean at Yale needs to be arrested under one or another provision of the Patriot Act; and some visa officer needs to be drummed out of the Foreign Service (and I just hope he names the higher-ups who armtwisted him into issuing).
Harvard's president was recently forced out for suggesting men and women's intellectual propensities toward mathematical, etc. pursuits might be built-in, and should be examined to see if this is why the numbers, in some departments, constantly skew toward one gender.
While the way he phrased it led to his de facto dismissal, the question is still valid. Do hominid males, from 3 million years of scanning horizons for game, while doggedly building snares, shaping spears and seeking secure shelter for their families, evolve one type of mental apparatus while women, used to cuddling children, stoking fires and hulling grains develop a complementary, but differently-directed biological mindset?
That he couldn't talk his way out of this fracas, with such weak-minded opposition, shows he deserved to be ejected as an intellectual light-weight.
Meanwhile-
Yale's president invites a former Taliban member to join the student body at one of the priciest schools on earth. (And who pays?) Aren't there enough native-born U.S. students worth this kind of exceptional nuturing?
This guy should be sent back to build up Afghanistan, and not be allowed to leech on our educational system.
Let him go reason with the neo-Taliban in his homeland, who still kill women for getting uppity on t.v. by playing pop tunes.
Yale's president, Richard C. Levin (who "holds an honorary degree from Peking University" quaintly enough... and shouldn't it be "Beijing University" if we are being so p.c.?... is also "director of Lucent Technologies since 2003" and was a chairman on the "President's Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass-Destruction" which issued a report last March- available through this link:
http://wmd.gov/report/index.html
-should be tossed out on his tin ear for this pandering silliness.
I'm waiting to hear his arguments.
I guess it is part of his "globalization of Yale" impetus?
Although I would rather see Theo Van Gogh's orphaned son get a free education at this ivy-league oasis than a potential spy for the jihad.
The link above is a little circuitous, try this one:
http://www.wmd.gov/report/index.html
Meanwhile, since Muslims find dogs unclean, how can this Taliban boy attend a school with such a haram mascot, ole "Handsome Dan" number 16?
I encourage him to leave Yale now, in Islamic outrage!
It's a really good idea to educate your enemies
isn't it, makes them so much easier to deal with.
Hugh,
Just curious:
After 9/11 we could almost daily see two turbaned, bearded clowns on the MSM telling us that "The United States has become a global bully...!"
Is this one of them?
Not only is he an ex-Taliban spokesman, he was sort of a roving envoy for the Taliban. He's the creep who was in Moore's propaganda piece on 911. Recall the beareded Taliban who lashed out at that lady who asked questions of him. So not only is he a Tailiban spokesman, a roving envoy, he's also a bastard. Hows that for a trifecta. I might also add that he claims a sort of eureka moment of enlightenment when some crazed American asked him if he was related to a dog. The Taliban said, 'no that's blasphemy.' The American(I think the same connection who got him into Yale) explained how the dog has two eyes, we have two eyes; the dog has two ears, we have two ears . . . and so on. This proved to be a transcendent moment for the Talibian skull and bones boy. I went to Bloomington, Indiana, so I'm not equiped to critique this dog analysis. I wonder if W had a similiar eureka moment.
You are right, Hugh, about the 501(c) and taxes comment. I guess I just didn't want to "see" it, because then I'd have to think about how our money goes to so many Islamic causes, one way or the other, and then I'd be really, REALLY, mad!