Terrorist U?

Don't look now, but there's a terrorist at Yale, or so many folks would have you believe. Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former "roving ambassador and spokesman" for the Taliban has been enrolled in a special, non-degree program at Yale University and is now—after securing a 3.33 GPA with little more than a 4^th grade education, lots of self motivated study, and a keen interest—attempting to enroll in a full-fledged, four-year undergraduate program. Some, including my colleague Kevin Carey, believe that Hashemi has no right to study at one of America's greatest institutions of higher learning. Despite the arguments that Yale would be "good" for Hashemi, and vice versa, these critics argue that there is a proverbial line in the moral sand, and that once crossed, individuals of ill-repute ought not to be afforded the opportunity to, well, learn.

It's true that a Yale education is a privilege that very, very few in this country are afforded. So why should the former public face of one of America's post-9/11 enemies be given the chance to study in New Haven? Would we offer the same opportunity to a bureaucrat in Kim Jong-il's regime? What about an official from Stalin's Russia, or Hitler's Germany? Should these types of people get to (or have gotten to) study at a great American university despite all the bad things they've been involved in?

My answer is an equivocal yes.

There is a fundamental difference between those who commit atrocities—and should thus be put in jail—and those who play administrative roles to enable or explain them. Some are evildoers and the others are often the evildoers' puppets. Hashemi is a man whose job required him to spout an evil and vicious party line. Had he not been so good at his job, we might respect him more, but he'd probably be dead. Do you really think that he, having never been raised to challenge authority, would have dared to do anything other than what Mullah Omar told him to do? Keep in mind, as the NYT Magazine profile ($) that first brought this story to light notes, that on returning to Kabul from his trip to the states (where he was bombarded by questions about women's' rights and free exercise of religion) he immediately went to Omar to ask why the Taliban was failing to educate Afghan women. His conscience was beginning to be stirred.

Besides, in terms of judging how bad a person he is, it's important to remember one basic fact: if you can get a visa from the feds to study in the US, then you can't really be that bad, right?

So take a guy like Hashemi from any crackpot regime, assume they pass the feds security clearance, and then ask should they get to study at Yale (also assuming, and this is important, that they have the drive to apply and want to be there in the first place) and I'll say yes they should and the reason has profound implications: The more representatives of horrible governments that we can expose to scientific reason, a plurality of viewpoints, moral relativism, tolerance, diversity, and a free marketplace of ideas—all of which are the hallmarks of the American academy—the more we can hope to reduce the existence of political and religious extremism over time.

As the NYT Magazine wrote, Hashemi "had been raised in a faith, buoyed at every turn by the certainty of a higher order, a purposeful universe, and now here in this shrine of critical thinking he was learning to doubt, not to believe."

It is hard to absolve a person when they have participated, or been complicit in criminal atrocities. But if it's not our role to offer intellectual salvation, then whose is it, especially if that salvation holds the potential to help insert doubt into the most overzealously fundamental regimes on earth.

Posted by Ethan Gray