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To: Sully- who wrote (18310)	3/15/2006 6:40:58 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Thank you, Senator Cornyn Posted by Scott Power Line NRO's Phi Beta Cons brings us Senator Cornyn's letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff: Dear Secretary Chertoff: <<< I write to you regarding Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Taliban spokesman currently attending Yale University on a student visa. In 2005, Congress passed the REAL ID Act and expanded the terror-related grounds of inadmissibility. Under current law, an alien is inadmissible or removable on terror-related grounds if he is a representative of any designated or nondesignated terrorist organization. Further, an alien is inadmissible or removable if the alien endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization. The REAL ID is clear that the grounds of inadmissibility and removal apply regardless of when the conduct in question occurred. Mr. Hashemi was an official spokesman for the Taliban, which gave safe haven and other material support to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and continued to do so even after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admitted him into the United States on an F-1 student visa. I would like to know what steps the Department of Homeland Security is taking to determine whether Mr. Hashemi was properly admitted and whether the Department of Homeland Security will seek to deport Mr. Hashemi under one of the terror-related grounds of removal. I am also concerned about the Department of Homeland Security’s role in reviewing Mr. Hashemi’s student visa application prior to its issuance. The report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States concluded that the key officials responsible for determining alien admissions (consular officers abroad and immigration inspectors in the United States) were not considered full partners in counterterrorism efforts prior to September 11, 2001, and as a result, opportunities to intercept the September 11 terrorists were missed. Congress subsequently passed the Homeland Security Act, and section 428 allows DHS to assign staff to consular posts abroad to advise consular officers, review visa applications, and conduct investigations. Yet it is not clear that DHS officials were afforded an opportunity to review Mr. Hashemi’s visa application prior to its issuance. Please provide an update on the progress DHS is making in assigning officers to the consulate in Islamabad and whether those officers are fully integrated into the visa screening process. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Sincerely, JOHN CORNYN United States Senator >>> And thank you, Professor Gelernter. Elsewhere at Phi Beta Cons, David Gelernter observes: <<< The intelligentsia haven’t told Yalies what to think yet because even they haven’t made up their minds. Students aren’t sure how far their liberal open-mindedness is supposed to go. Hashemi was a member of an evil and macabre terrorist group. Worse yet, he became their official spokesman and apologist to the world for their crimes — the Afghani Goebbels. The Taliban were not, as some suggest, a group of benevolent Afghani governors, but a gang of terrorists. Here’s the first of a series of Taliban-committed outrages listed in a Human Rights Watch report on the group: Yakaolang and Bamiyan districts, June 2001: After retaking central Yakaolang, Taliban forces under the command of Mullah Dadaullah burned about 4,500 houses, 500 shops, and public buildings. As they retreated east, they continued to burn villages and to detain and kill Shi'a Hazara civilians in villages and side valleys in eastern Yakaolang and the western part of Bamiyan district. The fact that Hashemi didn’t do the actual killing does not absolve him; Geobbels didn’t shoot anyone either. Equally, the fact that he is now retired means nothing — he isn’t “redeemed” by his retirement any more than a mafia gangster would be. I do not care to have this fellow in my dining hall, my college, or my country. >>> powerlineblog.com phibetacons.nationalreview.com cornyn.senate.gov phibetacons.nationalreview.com hrw.org

To: Sully- who wrote (18310)	3/23/2006 6:47:33 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Betsy's Page John Fund has been like a terrier on the story of the Taliban spokesman enrolling at Yale University. Today he gives some background on how Yale has responded in two other episodes when they found out that someone they had given a position of responsibility had a disreputable reputation. He revisits two times when Yale found out that a professor had a background with the Nazis. Their reaction then was quite different from their resisting criticism about accepting a Taliban apologist today. <<< The case of Vladimir Sokolov presents an interesting contrast with how Yale is reacting to its Talib student today. After his activities during World War II were exposed in 1976, he was run off campus and later deported. >>> Go on to read, as they say, the rest of the story. opinionjournal.com betsyspage.blogspot.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18310)	3/23/2006 10:08:34 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Taliban Man at Yale The story thus far. JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Thursday, March 23, 2006 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 Yale professor David Gelernter. 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. opinionjournal.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18310)	3/24/2006 6:30:49 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The boola boola mullah Greasing the skids to the gallows for Christians Mar 23, 2006 Townhall.com by Clinton W. Taylor Leave Islam, go to the gallows. That’s still the rule in Afghanistan, as we see in the sad case of Christian convert Abdul Rahman, on trial for his life there. (Michelle Malkin laid out his awful predicament in her column yesterday - linked below.) How is this still possible? Debbie Schlussel called the Afghani Embassy to ask that question and they laid the blame at the feet of "Mr. Shinwari, the Chief Justice, who is an old man and an intolerant Taliban remnant." It’s not the first time the Taliban has threatened Afghan Christians—or Americans—with execution. In late summer of 2001, as Al-Qaeda was planning their murderous venture, the Taliban was spinning their "trial" of eight foreign aid workers, including two Americans, and sixteen Afghan Christians whom they accused of secretly proselytizing—and who, it emerged, faced the death penalty. How could the Taliban possibly justify such a barbaric practice? They didn’t really even try. According to Canadian Channel CTV, "Their priority was to propagate Christianity which they were not supposed to do here," as Sayed Rehmatullah Hashmi, an aide to the Taliban's foreign minister, told reporters. Whoa, whoa, whoa! That name sounds familiar. Because the name of Yale’s prized "freshman" and former Taliban ambassador, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, is a pretty close match. But it couldn’t be the same guy. No, Yale’s tame Talib is a "moderate", a man who regrets the harsh things he’s said in his past (if not the ideology he embraced), a poor little lamb who "escaped the wreckage of Afghanistan", an earnest family man starting his life over. Yale’s Hashemi was no blustering theocrat, but according to Yale’s then-Dean of Admissions, "a person to be reckoned with and who could educate us about the world.'' Besides, the spelling is a little different, right? It could be some other Taliban fellow, right? After all, the spokesman who was justifying the trial and likely execution of the missionaries wasn’t a sweet, thoughtful fellow like Yale’s prize catch. That guy at the press conference was one sick puppy, holding up "evidence" of bloodguiltiness like—gasp—a child’s Bible! That guy even joked about the prisoners’ crimes as he played a videotape seized from an NGO that had employed the captives: <<< "O.K., turn it on," said Rehmatullah Hashmi, a foreign ministry official. A television set—itself a forbidden thing—brightened into life. A movie called Jesus appeared, its narrator extolling "the good news of the Virgin Mother and the Savior's birth." Soon, a young Jesus was on screen asking precocious questions of startled rabbis. "That's enough," said Mr. Hashmi, who tried some levity to accompany the grave accusations. "We have to put it off. Otherwise, we will also be proselytizing." >>> Ha, Ha. You might be proselytizing. And then you’d have to be executed, too! Hilarious. But it couldn’t be the same guy, because that quote came from The New York Times. And it was The New York Times Magazine article by Chip Brown that portrayed Yale’s Hashemi as a moderate, "disillusioned" with the Taliban. Surely the Times wouldn’t fail to check its own files on the guy, right, and leave out his justification of the Taliban’s religious persecution? Nah, couldn’t be the same guy. There’s no way he would still be spinning for Osama bin Laden on Sept. 12, 2001 in The New York Times: <<< In denying that Mr. bin Laden was involved in the attacks in the United States, Rehmatullah Hashmi, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said, "Amir-ul-Momineen condemns the attack," using another title for the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, one that means the commander of the faithful. "If we want peace for ourselves, we want peace for others. But such coordinated attacks cannot be carried out by one man or by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." >>> Couldn’t be the same guy. No way the Times would have left that detail out. And besides, Yale’s Rahmatullah Hashemi was taught English by an international relief organization, the International Rescue Committee, which was originally founded to assist German refugees fleeing Hitler. But this spokesman, in flawless English, is rationalizing the show trials of international relief workers just like the ones that sheltered him during the Soviet occupation. No one could be that viciously ungrateful. Well, guess what: Photo: BK Bangash, AP Taliban official Rehmatullah Hashmi, an official from the Taliban's foreign ministry, shows a book conficsated from the International Assistance Mission, IAM. Eight foreign aid workers have been arrested and are on trial on charges of preaching Christianity. http://www.guardian.co.uk/gallery/image/0,8543,-10504255641,00.html Boola boola, you son of a bitch. Oh, his picture was in The New York Times, too. Yale was founded to train Christian ministers in 1701. Since then it has changed, evolving from a liberal-arts college catering to the WASP elite, to a world-class research institution catering to the WASP elite. It’s a good school and I’m glad they let me in. I want it to prosper. But something has gone dreadfully wrong there. Where the war-cry used to be "For God, For Country, and For Yale", they have managed to betray all of these principles in, apparently, some bizarre rush to compete for trophy admits, good and evil be damned. Mr. Hashemi is not some pet to be prized for his exotic pedigree. He is an adult who made moral choices—some pretty awful ones, lying and spinning to cover the Taliban’s deeds and its relationship to Osama bin Laden, advising Mullah Omar on how to consolidate his power and achieve his twisted aims, and justifying the trial and likely execution of Christian teachers, who tried to snuff out the very Light and Truth that Yale takes as its motto. He no more deserves a place at Yale than did Josef Goebbels. It frightens me deeply that Yale, a school that prides itself on educating America’s leaders, cannot recognize that fact. Nor is Mr. Hashemi some truant, a wayward boy who needs correction for his views. That is the Taliban’s view of human nature, as demonstrated in this account of the missionary trial in Christianity Today: <<< According to Pakistan's English daily The News, another 60 or more Afghan children and youth who allegedly were "taught Christianity" by the SNI staff were also detained and sent to Darul Tadeeb, a detention center for minors, to be "re-educated in accordance with the teachings of Islam." Sixty-five young boys were released on August 11, reported Reuters, and their fathers were arrested instead for failing to supervise their children. >>> It should not be Yale’s view. Yale is not a reform school. It is not, or ought not to be, some Maoist re-education camp where illiberal impulses are squeezed out of incorrect minds. I have no sympathy for the notion that Mr. Rahmatullah deserves a place at Yale to rehabilitate him. He had great power for one so young, and he used it irresponsibly, to further evil ends. He does not deserve another chance. Abdul Rahman, whose life depends today on the cold mercy of a Taliban judge, does deserve a chance. He needs your prayers, your phone calls, and your earnest support. Some ideas to do so are linked below. Last time the war suspended the Taliban’s trials, and the prisoners—the foreign ones, at least—were eventually freed. Mr. Rahman will not have access to that sort of deus ex machina, but the Karzai government may still be pressured into saving him. When he’s safe, please consider joining the campaign I’ve started, along with a few other Yale alumni, to protest Yale’s admission of the Taliban. Since the misogynist Taliban liked to pull out or chop off the fingernails of women so bold as to wear nail polish, we are urging everyone to send Yale’s President and Development Office red, press-on fingernails to remind them of the Taliban’s brutality. Names and addresses are linked below, and our ongoing blog tracking this issue is also linked below. In the meantime, there has never been a more auspicious occasion for Yale and for Mr. Rahmatullah to break their media silence. Gentlemen, speak up on behalf of Abdul Rahman. If you wish to begin formulating an answer to your critics, here is an excellent opportunity to show us you know the difference between good and evil, and still care. Clint Taylor is a '96 Yale alumnus. Along with three other Yale alumni, he is tracking the story of the Yale Taliban on Townhall's Nail Yale blog. He can be reached here. Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com townhall.com townhall.com debbieschlussel.com guardian.co.uk ctv.ca nytimes.com townhall.com christianitytoday.com michellemalkin.com freedomszone.com cnn.com townhall.com townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18310)	3/24/2006 1:15:04 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

MORE EMBARRASSMENT FOR YALE: Instapundit <<< 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 seems to have gotten itself into a PR quagmire. instapundit.com opinionjournal.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18310)	3/31/2006 8:11:16 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

TALIBAN AT YALE - AND HARVARD? Deborah Orin NEW YORK Post Opinion March 31, 2006 MAYBE Yale isn't the only elite university with a "Taliban 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 admission 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. nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18310)	3/31/2006 10:03:55 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Youthful Indiscretions By Ed Driscoll March 30, 2006 Sitting in for Michelle Malkin, Allahpundit has some advice for America's youth: if you're planning to have a youthful criminal indiscretion, and you're trying to decide between shoplifting and blowing up a skyscraper, think big. Just remember, it's got to be radical and chic to look good on your Yale admission form. eddriscoll.com michellemalkin.com eddriscoll.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18310)	5/4/2006 11:03:07 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Taliban Man Ups The Ante By Captain Ed on National Politics Captain's Quarters The admission of former Taliban ambassador-at-large Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi into a non-degree program at Yale has caused an eruption of anger at the storied Ivy League institution. Despite catcalls from the press and alumni, Yale has refused to reconsider its supposedly prestigious "get" in light of his service to a brutally oppressive regime. Now Hashemi has escalated the stakes for Yale and its detractors by applying for admission into a degree program, creating another tripwire for further controversy: <<< A student at Yale University who was once a roving ambassador for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has applied for admission to a degree-granting program, putting new pressure on university officials in an emotionally charged political debate over his presence at Yale. The student, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, 27, began taking courses at Yale last summer in a nondegree program for untraditional students. After an article about his experience appeared in The New York Times Magazine on Feb. 26, Yale was fiercely criticized in opinion articles in The Wall Street Journal and in other newspapers and magazines, as well as on cable news shows and Web sites. Four alumni began a blog, Nail Yale, that questioned why someone they described as "an apologist for a brutal, misogynistic, terrorist-abetting tyranny" was being allowed to attend one of the country's most selective universities. And some families of victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and of American servicemen and women in Afghanistan accused the university of harboring a representative of a regime that had committed myriad crimes and repeatedly violated human rights. ... Now Yale faces the question of whether to admit Mr. Hashemi on a more formal basis to a program that leads to an undergraduate degree. Yale's president, Richard C. Levin, declined a request for an interview and has generally not spoken publicly about Mr. Hashemi. He did tell The Yale Daily News, the student newspaper, that the admissions office would decide whether to allow Mr. Hashemi to pursue a Yale degree. >>> This cannot have come as great news to the executive offices at Yale. They had tried to weather the storm their admissions office created when it granted Hashemi access to courses, trying to stand on the principle of academic freedom and the encouragement of an open market of ideas. This came as quite a shock to the ROTC, which has struggled for decades to get the access to Yale's campus that the admissions office blithely gave this mouthpiece for Islamofascism and oppression. As an aside, the reason Yale doesn't allow the ROTC back on campus is because of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of the US military towards gays and lesbians. Perhaps Yale can explain this policy in light of the admission of Hashemi, who represented a government that routinely executed homosexuals. The Yale admissions office now has a clear choice, and can no longer hide behind the facade of Hashemi's non-degree status. If they grant Hashemi access to the full range of Yale student privileges, they will send an unmistakable signal that celebrity matters more to Yale than principle, political correctness more than academics, and terrorists more than our own military. This is not an issue of tolerance, a laughable supposition on a campus that makes military service as inconvenient as possible while celebrating the "diversity" of admitting a key member of one of the most intolerant governments in the past fifty years. It's an issue of values -- and whether Yale actually has any at all. captainsquartersblog.com nytimes.com yalerotc.org yaledailynews.com