Yale, DePaul Top 'Campus Outrage Awards' for 2006
by Jim Brown
April 7, 2006
(AgapePress) - - One Ivy League university's recruitment of a former Taliban official has landed the school a dubious "Campus Outrage Award." The Collegiate Network has unveiled its ninth annual list of the most outrageous abuses of power and students' rights by college and university administrators. Topping this year's "Polly" awards list is prestigious Yale University, which enrolled as a student a former Taliban official who has a fourth-grade education. Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is quoted as saying he is "the luckiest person in the world" because "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale."
Collegiate Network executive director Steve Klugewicz says Yale has taken the idea of "diversity" to the extreme.
"Now diversity applies just not to people of various sexes, creeds, races, ethnicities, sexual preferences and practices, but also now to enemy combatants of the United States," says Klugewicz. He notes that Yale has barred ROTC from its main campus. "So if you're in the armed forces of the United States, you're really not welcome on Yale's campus," he points out. "But if you're an enemy combatant, someone who basically had a role in what happened on 9/11 [and in] killing Americans -- well, you're welcome at Yale."
Yale is a repeat winner, having taken the top award in 2004 for its role in supporting "Sex Week at Yale." Several of the events during that week were sponsored by an adult film company that also provided a female porn star as a keynote speaker.
Second on the "Campus Outrage" list for 2006 is Chicago-based DePaul University, which the Collegiate Network says has all but declared war on free speech with which it disagrees. First, the group cites the school for suspending -- without a hearing -- a professor who engaged in a heated on-campus debate with students who were distributing pro-Palestinian literature. DePaul's award was based on other criteria as well.
"DePaul also branded as propaganda a College Republican protest of a Ward Churchill speech on campus," says Klugewicz . Churchill is a University of Colorado professor who has referred to American victims of the 9/11 attacks "little Eichmans." Klugewicz says "just for protesting Ward Churchill's visit, the [DePaul] administration said this is wrong, this is propaganda -- and they really harassed these College Republicans."
Klugewicz notes DePaul also shut down a satirical affirmative action bake sale sponsored by the College Republicans, and charged the event's organizer with "harassment."
"Apparently," says the Collegiate Network, "free speech is allowed at DePaul only as long as it accords with the political views of the university administration."
Rounding out the "Polly" awards for 2006 are Stanford University, College of the Holy Cross (in Worcester, Massachusutts), the University of California System, the University of Iowa, and Buffalo, New York's Canisius College.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
