<p>Sadly, I think are is still the operative verb. Wearing my Yale alum hat, Im not sure Id be very happy to see a Hamas spokesman admitted as a student at Yale either.</p>
<p>Cosar, I think I'd have to agree with you. But I have to think; a Palestinian growing up in that environment would be much more likely to agree with Hamas's, well, less savory policies than would someone growing up in the West (well, most of the West). After spending a little while being educated and learning beyond the indoctrination, do you think such a person would realize their beliefs were wrong and repent? And if so, are they worthy of our forgiveness? Is such a person, despite their past actions, potentially fit for study at a place like Yale?</p>
<p>And while we're very quick to condemn such people--look, as an Israeli-American with a massive family around Tel Aviv, I feel as strongly as anyone about this--you have to think, if they, in that environment, are as capable as we are of being able to distinguish between right and wrong, would there really be such an overwhelming support in those regions for actions that we see as universally wrong and evil?</p>
<p>I hate to seem like I'm trying to whitewash their crimes, but I really do think that's at least some food for thought...</p>
<p>He's Not In Yale He's In Yale Extenstion. So He Did Not Take The Spot Of Any American High School Student.</p>
<p>Jimbob, first, theres no such thing as Yale Extension. He was admitted under a special student program, but took regular undergrad classes this year. Second, the question now before the house is his application to have his status converted to regular student and to spend three more years at Yale as an undergrad degree candidate. If that application is granted, then his defenders can no longer pretend hes not taking up an undergraduate seat (which he was as a special student as well, but the issue was less clear).</p>
<p>Guitarman, I think its legitimate even necessary for humans to make moral judgments about other humans in this world, but Im okay leaving the ultimate judgment of moral culpability in an absolute sense to a higher power. As for the judgment of whether there are more worthy candidates to fill a seat at Yale, in my mind the answer is clearly yes.</p>
<p>Again, while I am not going out on a defense of Sayed's specific statements, I do believe many of you are too quick to judge him based on his past associations (or perhaps on some dumb college rivalry).</p>
<p>From my experience interacting with him, I consider him a highly-intelligent, "chill" guy. He speaks several languages with native fluency and has a unique perspective. He's also more open-minded than most people I know - even at Yale. I have real faith in humanity as I have faith in him - believe he's here for the right reasons. If it's any indication, he listed his political views as "Moderate" on Facebook. While moderate may be a relative term, it is illuminating of his open-mindedness and "moderating" stance. He may have done questionable things in the past, but in reality he was only working for personal advancement within his own society - while never really participating directly in any of the Taliban regime's most unpopular practices. It was not without reason that the State Department and the Yale administration cleared his name and he was never charged with any wrongdoing.</p>
<p>More than angry or afraid, I'm excited by the possibility that one day Sayed will go back to Afghanistan permanently and become a catalyst for positive change.</p>
<p>mexican bulldog, that's awesome. we needed some informed input here! can't believe he has a facebook!</p>
<p>Hmm, I searched for him on Facebook once and didn't find him. Can he only be found by people on the Yale network?</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you had any appreciation for what the Taliban did to women what they were doing to women at the time Rahmatullah made this comment as a Taliban spokesman you wouldnt find it the least bit funny.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Do you really need to make that leap? Do you really think Hashemi had all those horrible deeds and beliefs in mind when making that infamous quip? You don't even know that he endorsed all those unnamed "things" the Taliban did to women. The explanation is simple. It was a joke--however misogynistic--that people took way too seriously. </p>
<p>
[quote]
1) He was a "high ranking official" in the Taliban regime. While that does not mean he was a terrorist, that also means that he was a supporter of oppression and brutality.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hashemi was a spokesman. He supported a group that made significant internal improvements to his country--a group that his people viewed as a long-awaited solution to their social, political, and fiscal problems. It is true that the Taliban has done some horrible things, but it has also done good things for the people of Afghanistan. Given the conditions of Hashemi's upbringing, it's not ridiculous to empathize with his involvement with the group, however much you disagree with the group's perceived beliefs.</p>
<p>
[quote]
2) Oh, he has a right to pursue an education. But no one has a 'right' to be admitted to any one school. I wonder if he'd get admitted on any sort of academic credentials.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What?</p>
<p>
[quote]
3) Someone who hasn't been a part of an oppressive islamic regime bent on the subjugation of women and the active sponsorship of terrorism.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Is that why you think Hashemi got involved with the Taliban? Do you really think he's that evil? </p>
<p>You're probably right. Never mind the welfare of his family or his people--I'm sure the only thing on the malevolent mind of 10-year old Sayed living in squalor, surrounded by poverty, working to support his family, was "Boy, I'd really like to blow up some buildings and make women feel ashamed to be women." </p>
<p>SonataX, if you were really as humanitarian as you've made yourself out to be, you might be able to look a little deeper into Hashemi's situation and see that his involvement with the Taliban does not automatically make him an evil being.</p>
<p>And GuitarmanARS--</p>
<p>He's under "Sayed Hashemi," and is listed under Yale '09. Could this mean he was accepted as a regular student?</p>
<p>Depends how long he's been listed as that for. I looked for Rahmatullah which explains the problem.</p>
<p>
<p> [quote=Witty Nickname] Hashemi was a spokesman. He supported a group that made significant internal improvements to his country--a group that his people viewed as a long-awaited solution to their social, political, and fiscal problems. It is true that the Taliban has done some horrible things, but it has also done good things for the people of Afghanistan.
Are you serious? If you honestly believe that the Taliban regime was good for Afghanistan (and if you still believe Rahmatullah's "infamous quip" was funny), then there's not much point in my trying to have a conversation with you. We must live on different planets.</p>
<p>
[quote]
He understood the context.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Perhaps I was unclear. I'm not arguing that Hashemi misunderstood the context in which he told the joke; he was giving a political speech, and the Taliban's treatment of women was an important point of controversy. I assert that what Hashemi said was not the rage-filled argumentative deathblow that you so desperately make it out to be, but rather a simple, mysoginistic joke that was apparently inappropriate given its audience and context. What he said does not necessarily reflect a history of unbending cruelty to women--it seems more like a clever (and rude) way of telling the woman to shut up. These kinds of jokes are omnipresent in American culture, and are not Taliban-specific.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Are you serious? If you honestly believe that the Taliban regime was good for Afghanistan...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I certainly do not claim that the Taliban has been "good for Afghanistan"--overall, the negatives of its rule far outweigh the positives. But if you care to do a little research, you might find that at its inception, the Taliban did, in fact, do good things for Afghanistan. With a little bit of reading, you might find that the social structure of Afghanistan just before the Taliban's rule was dominated by a warlord system--something that promoted widespread poverty and constant internal strife. </p>
<p>Although the Taliban eventually evolved into its current state, it began as a revolutionary movement meant to correct Afghanistan's internal problems. A bit more reading might shed light on the fact that Hashemi began his involvement with the Taliban around the time of its inception, when it was viewed by many not as a horrible, domineering system, but as a sort of social savior.</p>
<p>I don't really need to do "a little research," as I followed the development of the Taliban regime closely as it was happening. (That may be part of our disconnect - you probably view the Taliban as history rather than current events.) By the time Hashemi went on his U.S. roadshow, the atrocities of the Taliban were plain as day, and Hashemi was the Taliban spokesman defending these atrocities. After he returned to Afghanistan (and before 9/11) a UPI story described Hashemi as "rumored to be Afghanistan's next foreign minister."</p>
<p>Here's an interesting op-ed piece from the Yale Daily News that I hadn't seen before (though it's a couple of months old). Apologies if it's been posted before.
<a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=32322%5B/url%5D">http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=32322</a></p>
<p>An excerpt:
[quote]
Rahmatullah Hashemi and Malalai Joya seemingly have much in common. Both are 27, come from the same region of Afghanistan and are interested in international relations. But the similarities between Hashemi, silver-tongued former spokesman for the Taliban, and Joya, one of the new Afghani Parliament's youngest members, end there. Not long ago, while Hashemi toured the United States defending the public murder of unchaste women, Joya risked her life to teach girls -- which at the time was a capital crime.</p>
<p>Visiting last week, Joya gave Yale a piece of her mind. Hashemi's presence here is, to her, "disgusting" and an "unforgivable insult." . . . "Hashemi at first should face the court," she told me, demanding he be brought to his native country and answer for his role in advancing the Taliban's foreign policy goals so many years. </p>
<hr>
<p>"This kind of germ does not belong in the U.S.," Joya told me, and after having heard the few scraps of equivocation Hashemi has shared in the month since his front-page expose, I am inclined to agree. Had Joya been caught for her underground activities during the Taliban era, she probably would have been publicly executed and Hashemi would have defended her public murder.
[/quote]
</p>
<br>
<p>it's a no-win situation for them.</p>
<br>
<p>I agree with you, cosar. I think they're between a rock and a hard place politically. I don't know what the right answer is ethically OR politically. However, I feel pretty sure that it isn't as simple as "he wasn't a terrorist" or "he couldn't have known better, given his upbringing." Plenty of orthodox Muslims within Afghanistan as well as throughout the world knew better, and they condemned the Taliban for its many cruelties (and its many abuses of Islamic law). And if he did know better, but he took the job spreading the Taliban's message for the sake of his own personal advancement, I'm not sure that's morally preferable.</p>
<p>There's an interesting statement in the current Yale Alumni Magazine from Rick Levin, in which he expresses concerns about whether the standards for admission to the special student program have become too lax.</p>
[quote]
Our review has raised questions whether the admissions practices of the non-degree Special Student Program have been consistent with the published criteria, let alone the standard that should prevail. In recent years, while fewer than 10 percent of the applicants to the regular undergraduate program have received offers of admission, more than three-quarters of the applicants to the non-degree program have been admitted.</p>
<p>The procedures for admitting students to the degree-granting Eli Whitney Program have been more rigorous and have resulted in somewhat greater selectivity. Yet, here too, the rate of admission seems high when compared with regular admission to Yale College; almost 30 percent of recent applicants have been admitted. It is difficult to understand why the standard for this program should be any lower than that used to judge the qualifications for regular admission to Yale College, since the same degree is granted in both cases.
[/quote]
He goes on to say that, effective immediately, the standard for converting from the special student program to the degree granting program will be "equivalent to that applied to candidates for regular admission to Yale College." </p>
<p>In the same issue, there's a separate article on the whole controversy:</p>
<p>That article is generally sympathetic to Hashemi, but it does include the following interesting comment:
[quote]
The administration's public silence has left it unclear exactly who participated in the decision to admit Hashemi. Richard Shaw, who was Yale's dean of admissions until he left for Stanford last summer, talked enthusiastically about Hashemi with the Times Magazine writer ("This is a person to be reckoned with and who could educate us about the world") but has declined comment since. The standard process for admitting nondegree special students calls for a decision by the undergraduate admissions office. It allows for, but doesn't require, further consultation. The Yale Alumni Magazine has learned that, as is typical with admissions decisions, neither Yale's president nor the dean of the college took part in the decision to admit Hashemi. Yale's president told the Yale Daily News he would not take part in deciding on Hashemi's application to the special-student BA program.
[/quote]
So Levin sets a new more rigorous standard, but then says that he will "not take part in deciding" on the application. Very politically astute. ;)</p>
<p>haha. Interesting. Any official word on whether or not he got in? Facebook seems to say so...</p>
<p>Decisions are supposed to be made within two months of the May 1 application deadline, so there should be a decision by the end of June. I don't know that it will be officially announced, but given the public interest in the case, I would guess the word will get out one way or another. Is there any specific information about it on facebook?</p>
<p>Ehh, I'll be able to give you more information on that once I can actually see his Facebook, which will hopefully be Monday (I'm just waiting to get my Yale e-mail, a frustratingly drawn-out process). All I know is that it says Yale '09 so...maybe? :)</p>
<p>Let us know what you find. And congrats on that yale.edu email address. :)</p>
<p>Well, let's assume that he doesn't get in as of the end of June, I wonder what he'll do then? Apply to another school? Return to Afghanistan?</p>