Monday, February 27, 2006

Yale's diversity includes the Taliban


Just yesterday I had a conversation with a friend who sends her kids to the same private Catholic K-8 my son attends. I asked if her daughter, who would be moving onto high school in a few years, would attend the all girls Catholic high school in our neighbor. Her response was that she wanted her daughter to experience more diversity. In this case she meant that families who couldn't afford this high school and, surprisingly, boys were the source of some diversity that would benefit her daughter! Her husband is fortunately more on my page and said that's exactly why he wants his daughter to go to that school...for the lack of diversity. Not all diversity is good. But apparently Yale thinks its good to mingle with those who would kill you for simply where you were born or what God you worshiped. In fact so much so that a former (or is he?) Taliban envoy with a fourth-grade education and a high-school equivalency degree is admitted to Yale! Why do liberal elitists feel they have a duty to embrace death row murders and (supposedly) former terrorists or terrorist sympathizers? We can learn from everyone, but that doesn't mean we have to embrace those with, past or present, sinful ideologies or offer them the benefit of a first class education to do so.

Update (2/28): Malkin make a good point....bash Yale she says, but why did the State Department approve his student visa? And was he truthful on his application?

Update (3/1): A nice description of the typical liberal hypocrisy so prevelant on university campuses as noted by Yales own Daily News columnist James Kirchick:
Don't expect a word of protest from our feminist and gay groups, who now have in their midst a live remnant of one of the most misogynistic and homophobic regimes ever. They're busy hunting bogeymen like frat parties and single-sex bathrooms. The answer Hashemi gave five years ago when asked about the lack of women's rights in Afghanistan, "American women don't have the right not to find images of themselves in swimsuits on the side of a bus," is the sort of sophistry likely to curry favor among Yale's feminist activists, who make every effort to paint American society as chauvinistic while refraining from criticizing non-Western cultures. To do so would be "cultural imperialism," and we cannot have that at an enlightened place like Yale.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would agree -- there is plenty of blame to go around here. On Yale's plate, somewhere there's a kid who was valedictorian of his class, got 1500+ on his SATs, was editor of his school paper, but he's at Chico State now because Taliban Stan and his 4th grade education got his spot instead. But absolutely jump all over the state department for letting Stan in the country.

That said, to your point, diversity at any cost is not a good thing. Diversity on the whole, however, is a good thing. If we expose ourselves only to those who look, speak, believe and think like we do, we artificially limit the depth of our understanding and learning and it's a net loss to us all.

Tiny said...

schad,

agreed, but you couldn't limit your personal experience that way if you tried living in silicon valley (where I am)...a lot of other places, true enough.