Allah and Man at Yale

John Fund updates the story of Yale's special student, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former mouthpiece of the Taliban.

Back in the early 1990s, when he was dean of Yale College, Yale history professor Don Kagan warned about what he called the university's "mutual massage" between value-neutral professors and soft-minded students. He is even more critical now: "The range of debate on campus is more narrow than ever today, and the Taliban incident is a wake-up call that moral relativism is totally unexamined here. The ability of students to even think clearly about patriotism and values is being undermined by faculty members who believe that at heart every problem has a U.S. origin." Mr. Kagan isn't optimistic that Yale will respond to outside pressure. "They have a $15 billion endowment, and I know Yale's governing board is handpicked to lick the boots of the president," he told me. "The only way Yale officials can be embarrassed is if a major donor publicly declares he is no longer giving to them. Otherwise, they simply don't care what the outside world thinks."

But there may be one other source of worry for Yale. Mr. Hashemi told the New York Times that he will apply next month for sophomore status in Yale's full-degree program starting next fall. An admissions official told me Yale's plan all along was to do just that if his grades were acceptable. But next week, Yale will mail out 19,300 rejection letters to those who applied to be in its class of 2010. "I can't imagine it'll be easy for Yale to convince those it rejects that the Taliban student isn't taking a place they could have had," a former Yale administrator told me.

Former Yale president Benno Schmidt says admitting Mr. Hashemi is an exercise in "amorality and cynicism." He told me that "diversity simply cannot be allowed to trump all moral considerations." It's not as if Yale can't muster moral indignation. Yale is divesting from Sudan, responding to pressure from student activists and labor unions. But when it comes to a former Taliban official, there is a desire to move on.