Yale Both Stonewalls and Attacks on Taliban Student Issue

Posted on Mar 14, 2006

Mike Hoover / CBS via The New York Times

Yale University is officially staying silent on its decision to enroll the Taliban’s former international spokesman (pictured above) as a student, but one university official has called alumni critical of the decision “retarded.”

In the wake of The New York Times Magazine’s cover story on the former Taliban official attending Yale, alumni are setting up protest websites designed to hurt fundraising efforts. Yale mostly won’t talk, but one university official responded by calling the critics “retarded.” (Hat tip: Huff Po)

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Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal:

The two most dysfunctional management cultures I know of right now are the Bush White House and Yale University. From Katrina to Harriet Miers to Dubai, Team Bush is showing signs of being insular, burnt out, and desperately in need of new talent. The White House is also beset by an increasing number of leaks, the clear result of people frustrated that the higher-ups don’t appear to be listening.

The president’s alma mater is experiencing a similar flood of leaks, as the community there reacts to omert the university has practiced in refusing meaningful comment on its admission of a former top Taliban official, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi. Beyond a single vague 144-word statement (later expanded to 281 words, including a defense of Yale’s not hosting a ROTC program), Yale won’t let anyone comment officially, citing student privacy issues and hoping they can keep silent and last out the storm. But unofficially, some Yale administrators are privately trashing critics. One even anonymously sent scathing emails to two critics calling them “retarded” and “disgusting.”

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110008082

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