Has Harvard embraced the Taliban like Yale?

Deborah Orin:

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.

...

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.

...

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 admissio 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.

...

There is more including a discussion of some of the women tht the Ivy's would not admit.