Taliban At Harvard? Rumors Fly at Yale

A former Yale admissions dean says the school accepted an ex-Taliban official because it didn’t want to see Harvard woo the Afghani applicant to Cambridge.

Richard Shaw, who served as Yale’s dean of admissions from 1993 to 2005, told the New York Times Magazine that Yale admitted Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the Taliban’s former chief envoy, because the school had once had a student of similar caliber apply but that it had “lost him to Harvard” and “didn’t want that to happen again.”

When asked if Harvard had indeed admitted such a student, Harvard College Admissions Director Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 said that even if it had, Harvard “would not, in fact, comment on any individual applicant.”

She did say, however, that she does not “remember any such case,” and that her “memory goes back pretty far.” But she insisted that she could not be absolutely certain that Harvard had not admitted such a student in the past.

Shaw did not return several calls from The Crimson seeking explanation or evidence about the alleged student who was admitted to Harvard.

Hashemi gained some notoriety for a clip of one of his appearances in Michael Moore’s 2004 documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11.” In the clip, he was confronted at a conference in Washington, D.C., by protesters, including one woman who shouted, “You have imprisoned the women—it’s a horror, let me tell you.”

He responded, “I’m really sorry to your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you.”

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.