Ivory Tower Stonewall

Charles Johnsonfollow me on twitter
Mon Apr 3, 2006 at 8:17 am PDT • Views: 236

The elitist attitude of wacademia is on fine display in this article at Inside Higher Ed, about Yale’s admission of a Taliban ambassador: The Elite Ex-Taliban.

“The outsiders are largely right-wing commentators,” says Zachariah Victor, a member of Yale’s Graduate and Professional Student Senate. “They don’t have reason, science or history on their side, so they try to degrade intellectuals and universities. Rational argument cannot support them, so they turn to ‘morality’ and religion. They have little expertise, so they deprecate expert opinion and appeal to populist sentiment. They cannot comprehend the breadth of our constitution, so they try to subject the rights of the few to the superstitions of the many.”

“Most attacks on Mr. Hashemi from outside of Yale are political in nature,” agrees Joshua Krug, a student leader with Yale’s Hillel group. “Conservatives want the country to believe that ultra-liberals control American universities.”

In today’s OpinionJournal, John Fund tells the story of one of these “right-wing commentators”—Katherine Bailey, whose husband was on Flight 175 when it was flown into the World Trade Center: Ivory Tower Stonewall.

Katherine Bailey and her sister, Margaret Pothier, have a bone to pick with Yale President Richard Levin over his university’s admission of a former Taliban official as a student. Mrs. Bailey lost her husband, Garnet “Ace” Bailey, on 9/11. Mr. Bailey, a hockey scout and former Boston Bruins star, was a passenger on United flight 175 when it slammed into the second World Trade Center tower.

Mrs. Bailey’s sister, whose daughter graduated from Yale last year, has written Mr. Levin three times to demand an explanation. All she has gotten back is a single “form letter” that repeats the same vague 144-word response that has been Yale’s sole statement on its Taliban Man for the past five weeks. “It’s insulting and not at all brave,” says Mrs. Bailey. Ms. Pothier is even more blunt: “Can’t they see they are causing people pain and making it worse by ignoring our questions?”

In the past month, Mrs. Bailey and Ms. Pothier have had to be painfully reminded of Ace Bailey’s death twice. The first was when they both watched a live TV feed of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker who was arrested a month before 9/11 and now has confessed to helping plot the attacks.

The second was when they learned that Yale had admitted Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a 27-year-old former official of the Taliban, the murderous regime that harbored Osama bin Laden. Mr. Hashemi remains largely unrepentant about his involvement with the regime, whose remnants are still killing Americans. Last Wednesday brought word of the 139th U.S. soldier to be killed in combat at the hands of Taliban guerrillas, and yesterday, five U.S. soldiers were wounded when their armored vehicle struck a Taliban roadside bomb in Kunar province.

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