As another Yalie (okay, Drama School – only half counts), I have to agree with Glenn Reynolds’ skepticism about the vaunted NYT magazine cover story (or should I say hagiography?) of yesterday concerning the New Haven education of former Taliban spokesman Sayed Rahmatullah Hashem. Of course, spokesman is the right term because the mega-misogynist Taliban never had any spokespeople and never will. What was most disturbing to me about the Times’ piece about the Yale freshman was not the predictable mouthing off about Guantanamo, but the peculiar absence of the most obvious question. What in the hell right does this guy have to leave his wife and four and five year old children in Pakistan to go to Yale for four years? He wistfully complains that he misses them, but he could have done a thousand things to bring them with him or find an education elsewhere. His choice strikes me as the height of arrogant male chauvinism. Once a Taliban always a Taliban, it seems. Of course, that doesn’t fit in with the NYT narrative.
UPDATE: John Fund writes of the twenty-two year old Rahmatullah’s PR tour in early 2001:
But sometimes his humor really backfired. At a speech for the Atlantic Council, Mr. Rahmatullah was confronted by a woman in the audience who lifted the burkha she was wearing and chastised him for the Taliban’s infamous treatment of women. “You have imprisoned the women–it’s a horror, let me tell you,” she cried. Mr. Rahmatullah responded with a sneer: “I’m really sorry to your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you.”
Later Fund concludes:
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.
What can you expect of a newspaper which effectively collaborated with the Nazis by remaining almost completely silent about the Holocaust as a matter of deliberate policy?
I really don’t know how Sulzberger can sleep at night.
What in the hell right does this guy have to leave his wife and four and five year old children in Pakistan to go to Yale for four years?
The right of a man of property.
If he views his family as his property, he has absolutely no need to bring them along. They all belong to him, here or there.
He can still have three more wives, and numerous temporary wives. They may all live happily on one floor of Yale’s dorm for married students.
He may also decide he likes some modern ways and dump the spouse in Pakistan for a Western trophy wife.
The real question is: who’s paying his tuition?
Out there across America are high school students and their parents who have devoted the last four years to getting good grades and being the best in class, expecting that their effort will get that large thick letter from Yale accepting him/her to next September’s class.
Regrettably, Yale decided to accept this goofball from another planet to satisfy their diversity quota so Yale can tally the rolls and report to the Department of Education that it has fulfilled its obligation to affirmative action.
Only in America.
He probably wants to keep his wife from picking up degenerate Western ideals and dreaming of freedom.
This is the email I sent to Hashemi’s patron, Yale graduate Wyoming attorny Bob Schuster:
To: bob@bobschuster.com
Subject: Recommendation requested
Dear Mr. Schuster,
Having read of your selfless efforts to help Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi gain admission to your alma mater, Yale, perhaps you might be able to help another non-traditional student gain the advantages of a Yale education. Admittedly, I don’t have a fourth grade education – instead of earning a G.E.D., I graduated with honors from an accredited public high school in Berkley, Michigan, and scored 1440 on the pre-recalibrated SAT, but I hope that you will not hold that against me.
I have been looking for employment and I have found that my lack of four year degree is hampering my job search. I attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the 1970s, majoring in Studies in Religion while simultaneously taking a pre-med curriculum. My grade point average there was a 3.0, and my honors advisor was Prof. David Noel Freedman. I did not finish my degree at the time, being a new father with a family to support but did acquire 101 credits toward graduation. Subsequent to that, while managing hazardous waste for an industrial laboratory I took waste management courses at the Wayne State University Graduate School of Engineering, earning a 4.0 GPA. At this point, I have 113 credits towards 120 needed for a degree. The final seven credits must be earned in my major, and Yale has an outstanding selection of courses relating to religion. Since I would be applying the credits earned towards my degree at U of M, the non-degree program where Mr. Hashemi is enrolled is perfect for my needs.
If you could assist me in contacting the appropriate people in the Yale admissions department or even just pass my name along to them it would be most appreciated. Alternatively, you might suggest that they provide admissions assistance to my son, Moshe, who scored 1550 on his SAT including a perfect score on the math section. He is also a non-traditional student, having attended a dual curriculum cultural immersion high school The Rabbi Naftali Riff Yeshiva in South Bend. The curriculum there included research on ancient texts in two ancient mideast languages. Perhaps, also, the Yale admissions department might be interested in my daughter Tova, as well. She scored a 29 on the ACT and is a senior in another dual curriculum cultural immersion high school, The Sally Allen Alexander Bais Yakov School for Girls, where she is the yearbook editor. She also plays the drums. Though she is being heavily recruited by colleges in the area, I’m sure that she would consider Yale if you would do the same for her as you did for Mr. Hashemi.
Thank you for your assistance.
Sincerely,
C’mon, Roger. What sort of ideological claptrap were YOU mouthing at age 22?
I think I know, because I was there with you.
Some of the brightest lights in the anti-communist movement were ex-communists, who learned first-hand the sickness of that ideology.
Why not give ex-Jihadists the same chance to mature and play a positive role?
Where is the money coming from.
Does Yale allow US Military recruiters? The thought of them excluding spokesmen for an organization becuase it didn’t allow gays to serve openly and then admitting the spokesman for a group that didn’t allow gays to … uh … breath is just too delicious for words.
Last week, Larry Summers’s Fear-Society cave got me to saying, no more donations to Harvard till further notice (okay, Design School – only half counts?)
Now this. Tuck is just saying to no more donations to Yale till further notice (okay, School of Art and Architecture – only half counts?)
Between the two of us, we may have a full count.
Hey, don’t college freshmen have to go through compulsory diversity indoctrination? Hopefully Sayed won’t be too offended to learn of his improper, unacceptably antisocial opinions of females, homosexuals and other minorities.
I’ll gladly support diversity training locally if we can include everybody.
Because David Kline, women hold up half the sky, remember that? I don’t support reactionaries and I don’t think you should either. If the man had brought his wife, everything would be different in my book because I do believe people can change. But he obviously hasn’t. Think through and please read my posts before making criticism.
Well the business about his wife not coming is just a cultural difference, Roger. I suspect you’d find hundreds of millions of non-Jihadist Muslims doing the same in similar circumstances — especially Afghan Muslims.
When I covered the war there, I knew many patriotic fighters who left their wives and children with relatives in Pakistan while they went off to Europe or America to try to start new lives, free from Soviet tyranny.
Besides, how is he going to feed and support his family while he’s in school? His main support comes from a few friends, right?
I think you’re looking at this through Western cultural eyes. Even after the Jihadists are defeated, it’ll still take time for many Muslim cultures to achieve Western-style women’s equality. That’s just a cultural fact that has nothing to do with Islamic fanatacism.
“I don’t support reactionaries and I don’t think you should either.”
P.S. Roger, if his culturally- and economically-determined decision to leave his wife behind is “reactionary,” then I guess you’d have to call the millions of Pakistani, Afghan and other Muslim “guest” workers throughout the Middle East and Europe “reactionary” as well.
That’s just silly, and I suspect you know that.
Wow – what a fascinating series of comments.
Given his background, I’m surprised nobody has compared and contrasted it with these two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_Sally
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Rose
Particularly Sally, and her academic career, before and after her intervening . . . um . . . experience.
Congratulations, Johan, on the kids’ stellar achievements!
“Why should Mr. Rahmatullah go to the line ahead of all of them?”
Because academia LOVES terrorist thugs. Goodness knows they hire and give tenure to as many as they can find.
Is what he did for the Taliban different in any material way from what Joseph Goebbels did for the Nazi party? (Age and level of talent aside)
What would have been Goebbels’ fate at Nuremberg if he had not killed himself first?
DKline, how can you compare Rahmatullah to a “guest worker?” Rahmatullah is a privileged person on scholarship to Yale who elected to leave wife and children behind. It would seem he would have many choices in his life. He elected this. I would agree with our host that this is is not a man to be applauded or brought to Yale (especially with out his family – something that doubtlessly could have been arranged by the rich people supporting him).
Whatever scholarship or other funds he receives do not include support for a wife and children.
And again, family relations are culturally-determined. Do you not know any Indian, Pakistani or other central Asian students here in the U.S. with wives and families back home? If not, you haven’t visited a college campus lately.
As for comparing Rahmatullah to Goebbels, wow! All I can say is, Theodore Dreiser would have found you guys a tough crowd, as would some very high-placed leading conservatives of today who were once leftists (and even members of the Communist Party) in their misguided youth.
Talk about dogmatic rigidity … Jeez!
We’re still at war with the Taliban…we shouldn’t be educating their spokesmen…I mean come on.
He quit the Taliban, or didn’t you read that part?
Hell, U.S. forces have, in cooperation with the Karzai government, reintegrated hundreds of ex-Taliban into Afghan society. And a smart strategy it is, too, to separate the die-hard Taliban from those who were merely misguided.
Or do you oppose U.S. policy in Afghanistan?
I don’t care if he claims he quit the Taliban – there’s plenty of Western educated men in Al Qaeda’s command structure.. The world will go on, Afghanistan will not break because we don’t educate their former spokesman.
From the Washington Post:
___________________
Kabul-Afghanistan–Feb. 15–Four senior Taliban leaders have accepted a reconciliation offer from the Afghan government, a Western official with direct knowledge of the deal said Tuesday.
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has said former followers of the Taliban are eligible for reconciliation, with some exceptions.
The official identified the four as Abdul Hakim Mujahid, formerly the Taliban’s envoy to the United Nations; Arsullah Rahmani, the former deputy minister of higher education and a former commander in southeastern Paktika province; Rahmatullah Wahidyar, the former deputy minister of refugees and returnees; and Fawzi, the former charge d’affaires at the Afghan Embassy in Saudi Arabia and then first secretary at the Afghan Embassy in Pakistan. Like many Afghans, Fawzi uses only one name.
Karzai and U.S. officials have repeatedly stressed that former followers of the Taliban are eligible for such arrangements, with the exception of an estimated 100 to 150 known to have associated with terrorist groups such as al Qaeda or to have committed atrocities during the fundamentalist Islamic militia’s brutal rule over much of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
_______________________
To the best of my knowledge, neither Dreiser, nor any of the other deluded saps who jumped on the communist bandwagon practiced stoning those who disagreed with them or any of the other violences routinely and habitually engaged in by the Taliban – for whom Hashemi spoke.
A better comparison would be the Nazi party. The Taliban surely have not reached that level of barbarism – but they are just getting started. The level of intolerance and outright hatred of those deemed as “Other” puts them on the same track, in my opinion.
Perhaps, in the name of diversity and fairmindedness, Yale might want to consider admitting a skinhead? How about an ex-Shining Path member? The options are boundless. When you think about it, this is a real opportunity for Yale to step up and become a truly diverse institution. By opening their doors to more of these misunderstood progressives, Yale can take a truly giant step into the future. Of course, whether they like it once they get there, is another question entirely.
He quit the Taliban, or didn’t you read that part?
Big deal.
You really think this once-a-Taliban creep is going to parlay his Yale experience into being the next Islamic MLK? I’ve got beachfront property to sell you in Arizona.
The problem is common decency and sense. There wasn’t some 9/11 victim’s kid that Yale could have awarded that slot to?
It makes me sick to see anyone prematurely rehabilitate this guy. What planet do you live on?
Maybe you need to review the the backgrounds of the 9/11 bastards.
I think the whole thing is overblown. Non-degree programs usually have lower entry requirements than degree programs. Besides, It seems to me that this guy is pretty smart. Yale material if I may say so. Of course, he grew up in a war zone, where formal education may have been hard to come by. Regardless of formal education, he ended up as a senior official of a de-facto national government at the age of 22. Most people of that age don’t get that sort of experience.
Diversity is obviously very important to Yale, and this gentleman clearly is quite diverse not only in ethnicity but also in outlook. Yale could use a few more points of view.
Sure. Let’s let him graduate. Maybe in 25 years he’ll be the President of a radical regime in Afghanistan again, denying the Holocaust and counting the costs in Muslim lives of nuking Israel.
Perhaps Yale’s outreach will extend to welcoming conservatives to the faculty. I won’t hold my breath! Actually, admitting a former Taliban spokesman is not adding to Yale’s diversity at all; he’ll feel right at home. Yale had better offer him a good package or Harvard may recruit him for a new opening at the top.
“To the best of my knowledge, neither Dreiser, nor any of the other deluded saps who jumped on the communist bandwagon practiced stoning those who disagreed with them or any of the other violences routinely and habitually engaged in by the Taliban.”
Dreiser didn’t personally, no. Neither did some of today’s leading conservatives, who were once the “deluded saps” you speak of. But the communist movement to which they swore allegiance killed, what, 80 million people over the course of a hundred years.
Anyone who truly wants to win the war on terror understands that the first rule of a winning strategy is to separate the “middle forces” from the die-hard unrepentent fanatics so as to isolate the latter.
We’re doing that very well in Afghanistan, less well in Iraq.
And what’s more, having lived 10 years with the Afghan people, knowing as I do that the Taliban movement was a form of “temporary insanity” brought on by the horrors of 25 years of war that turned one of every three Afghans into a refugee or a corpse and wrought the destruction of all social institutions in that country — and knowing further that Afghan society had no previous history of fundamentalism, being a largely Sufi society — I am absolutely confident that the Afghan people will never again let fanatics like these rule their country.
If you had more direct experience with people in Muslim countries, Cutler, I’m confident you’d be a bit more open-minded about Rahmatullah.
You’re more willing to give the former Taliban spokesman benefit of the doubt than me. Well, we’re soon to see if Yale Admissions does the same.
You see, there’s some of us who are trying to get in who didn’t jump to the front of the line because we’re the heads of fanatical religious militias in exotic countries.
You know nothing about me you self-righteous prick.
“You know nothing about me you self-righteous prick.”
And that includes where I’ve lived.
If I’ve assumed incorrectly that you’ve never lived in a Muslim country, specifically Afghanistan, and gained experience of their culture, than I sincerely apologize, Cutler.
Oh, I’m sorry: “Former heads,” cause after all, we trust a guy who made his living lying for said militia.
The thing that pisses me off the most about the Bush Administration is that I do not expect anyone to get fired for letting this guy get a student visa.
David Kline and the Strabo guy are Exhibit A on why the Left is simply INSANE.
Period.
This guy actively defended the Taliban, like Goebbels. He deserves to be shot as an enemy of humanity and the US, not sitting in Yale instead of deserving US citizens.
Diversity btw is the enemy of the working class and middle class Anglo. If you want Le Pen type politics then go ahead, push “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” Which means some people (enemies of America) get preference over those without connections or wealth or power. I’m sure Kline loves to demonstrate his moral superiority over other elites, the rest of us recognize the enemy and want him punished not taking his ease at Yale. [This btw destroys any legitimacy the NYT, Yale, academia have with the average person. The Academy is the enemy. We are the "little Eichmans" whose deaths they celebrate.]
Mr Kline: I have had quite enough experience with Muslims thank you. 9/11, “Freedom go to hell,” “Behead those who insult Islam,” “Islam will dominate,” and “God Bless Hitler” along with Beslan, Bali, London, and the various latest atrocities tell me entirely what I need to know about Muslims. They wish to rule over me with their Sharia here in the US, therefore they are my enemy and that of America. Nothing more be said.
Your buddy specifically defended in detail (to the admiration of Carina Chocano btw) the destruction of the Buddhist statues and Sharia’s cruelty including executing women in soccer stadiums. He is loathesome in the extreme.
Arafat, Khomeini, the vermin used to go to frogistan.
Please don’t tell me we’re the new choice for the mass murderers.
“… the rest of us recognize the enemy and want him punished.”
Yeah, well YOU get kidnapped by Jihadists and undergo a mock execution, then you can tell me how you want the enemy punished more than I do.
Arrogance is easy when it’s only theoretical to you personally.
Well Mr. Kline I choose to fight, rather than surrender. From a man who describes himself as “kidnapped by Jihadists and undergoing a mock execution” you seem awfully sympathetic to this Goebbels like character.
I like everyone else who works in and around LA am a target for the nukes that your buddies want to set off. No manner of groveling will save me; I take them at their word that “you submit or we slaughter.”
When Yale prevents ROTC people from wearing their uniforms on campus or participating in events; or on-campus Military recruiters, and gives a scholarship to a sworn enemy of this country who was part of a regime that murdered 3,000 Americans I find it wrong. I guess I’m funny that way. Obviously you have evolved to a superior moral position so that the murders of your fellow countrymen move you not.
Seemingly, you are following in the tradition of Robert Fisk (who said his own beating by Afghanis was justified because he was a Westerner). You may be ashamed of being an American but I am not. You may wish to avoid provoking jihadis by unconditional and pre-emptive surrender on every front by I do not.
I would be quite pleased to see this guy thrown into Guantanamo for the duration; say the next rest of his life. And Yale lose all it’s federal funding. You may have chosen submission; that’s your choice. Not mine.
I do not understand how Mr. Rahmatullah got a Visa into this country. I understand he is on a student visa, but is it usual to give enemy foreign nationals entry into the US? What the heck?! I remember reading that Salon article and being appalled, I can’t believe he has been allowed to return.
Hmmm.
At Yale the absurd has met the ridculous.
Hmmm.
That’s actually a fairly standard rhetorical trick.
What you do is try to establish a level of credibility on a subject, and then use that achieved credibility to undercut the opposition.
It’s like Jimmy Carter, as an established humanitarian, finding elections run by dictators as proper.
In 1969, I graduated from Yale with a degree in Molecular Biology and Biophysics.
It shames me to see the depths to which my alma mater has descended.
This son of a bitch should never have entered the country, let alone what was once one of its leading institutions of higher learning.
FWIW, I have lived (briefly) in an Islamic country, Morocco, a country in which my dear sister has spent her entire adult life. In recent years, Morocco (which like most Islamic nations has many fine people) has produced some of the worst of the Islamists. I don’t know what to make of this. It wouldn’t lead me to conclude that no Moroccan should be admitted to Yale. I would, however, aver that none of the group of Moroccans who were behind, for example, The Madrdid atrocity should be so admitted.
Jamie Irons
I can see why the school accepted him back…
But how did he get a visa…enquiring minds want to know…
Either the state department is completely incompetent, or else he was a double agent, in their pay…