While most American parents can only dream of sending their kids to a first-tier university such as Harvard and Yale, a former ambassador for the oppressive and brutal Afghan Taliban is enrolled at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, even though he possesses none of the qualifications to attend such an institution for higher education.
“Yale University enrolls the Taliban’s former spokesman as a student, but continues to prohibit other students from organizing a Reserve Officer Training Corps chapter on campus and also seeks to deny students the right to hear from military recruiters about employment opportunities,” say members of the student group Young America’s Foundation.
Under the guise of alleged sex discrimination as a result of the military’s so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy towards homosexuals, Yale and other universities have blocked their students from partaking of ROTC training on campus.
“Yet Yale University is allowing a member or former member of a group that not only discriminated against gays, but actually stoned them to death,” says one outraged Yale student.
On February 26, the ”’New York Times Magazine”’ reported that Yale admitted Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the Deputy Foreign Secretary of the Taliban, into a non-degree program, with a chance to gain full degree status by 2006.
“In some ways I’m the luckiest person in the world,” Hashemi told the Times. “I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale.”
Prior to his arrival as a student, Hashemi was imprisoned at Bagram Air Base. He had been a member of the Taliban government, serving both in Afghanistan and in the United States as Second Foreign Secretary and Ambassador-at-Large. Yale has not commented on why the university, which accepts only ten percent of all applicants, granted admission to this former Taliban officer. One Yale official claims it’s part of creating diversity on campus, but opponents of having a Taliban officer attend a premier college say that excuse has been used by colleges and universities to invite everyone including cop-killers to their campuses.
Hashemi possesses a 4th grade formal education, never took the SATs and advocated violence against homosexuals. As the mouthpiece for the Taliban, Hashemi advocated the oppression of women, gays and non-Muslims. The Taliban are known associates and allies of Al-Qaeda. Not surprising, one intelligence report indicates Hashemi attended an Al-Qaeda terrorism training camp in Afghanistan.
Yale alumnus, and former Army Captain Flagg Youngblood said, “That my alma mater would embrace an ambassador from one of America’s declared and defeated enemies and in the same breath keep ROTC and military recruiters off campus shows where Yale’s allegiance falls. Yale’s actions show that they consider the US military more evil than
the Taliban.”
While at Yale in the mid-nineties, Flagg worked with members of Congress and other Yale students and alumni to combat ROTC’s second-class status on many campuses across the country. Flagg’s frustration with the 70-mile drive to the University of Connecticut in order to participate in ROTC culminated in the passage of the Pombo and Solomon amendments which are currently before
the US Supreme Court.
Hashemi’s enrollment at Yale was aided by ”’CBS News”’ cameraman Mike Hoover, who developed a friendship with the Taliban government apologist during several trips to Afghanistan, dating back to 1991. According to Hoover, he contacted an attorney in his hometown of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. That attorney, Bob Schuster, who had earned his undergraduate degree at Yale, brought Hashemi to the attention of Richard Shaw, the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions.
According to the ”’Times”’, Shaw said of his interview with Hashemi,