Request Stokes Debate Over Yale Student With a Taliban Past "A student at Yale University who was once a roving ambassador for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has applied for admission to a degree-granting program, putting new pressure on university officials in an emotionally charged political debate over his presence at Yale. The student, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, 27, began taking courses at Yale last summer in a nondegree program for untraditional students. After an article about his experience appeared in The New York Times Magazine on Feb. 26, Yale was fiercely criticized in opinion articles in The Wall Street Journal and in other newspapers and magazines, as well as on cable news shows and Web sites. Four alumni began a blog, Nail Yale, that questioned why someone they described as ''an apologist for a brutal, misogynistic, terrorist-abetting tyranny'' was being allowed to attend one of the country's most selective universities. And some families of victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and of American servicemen and women in Afghanistan accused the university of harboring a representative of a regime that had committed myriad crimes and repeatedly violated human rights. But on campus, a number of students and professors support his presence, saying that he would benefit from a Yale education and that they would benefit from having him at the university. Now Yale faces the question of whether to admit Mr. Hashemi on a more formal basis to a program that leads to an undergraduate degree. Yale's president, Richard C. Levin, declined a request for an interview and has generally not spoken publicly about Mr. Hashemi. He did tell The Yale Daily News, the student newspaper, that the admissions office would decide whether to allow Mr. Hashemi to pursue a Yale degree. Mr. Levin also said last month that a Yale College subcommittee would review the mission and the admissions criteria this summer for both the program Mr. Hashemi is currently in and the one he has applied to. In a statement issued in March, the university said: ''We acknowledge that some are criticizing Yale for allowing Mr. Hashemi to take courses here, but we hope that critics will also acknowledge that universities are places that must strive to increase understanding, especially of the most difficult issues that face the nation and the world.'' Mr. Hashemi worked for the Office of Foreign Affairs under the Taliban, serving initially as a translator and then as a diplomat in the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. He was named a roving ambassador in 2000, traveling to the Middle East and Europe. He toured the United States early in 2001, speaking at Yale and several other universities and appearing on public television and radio; he defended the abridgement of women's rights by the Taliban and the destruction of huge Buddhist statues, among other things. At Yale, where the debate has been more muted than in the opinion columns, some students argue that Yale, as an ethical matter, should not admit Mr. Hashemi into the degree-granting program. ''I think the university is well within its rights to deny admission to people who've been complicit in a wide variety of crimes,'' said William A. Wilson, a freshman who is active in the Yale Political Union, a nonpartisan student group that organizes debates on current affairs. Mr. Hashemi's supporters say it is in the long-term interests of the university and the country to educate bright Islamic students, so they learn to think critically and better understand the West. ''He is an example to me of intellectual curiosity and tolerance,'' said Tatiana Maxwell, the president of the International Education Foundation, which was created to raise money to send Mr. Hashemi to college. ''There is value to him to be at a university where the highest intellectual standards are upheld,'' she said. ''On the flip side, if someone is willing to listen and see his value -- Yale, which is educating our future leaders, has the most to gain by having him in its midst.'' Mr. Hashemi did not respond to a request for an interview. Despite two months of criticism in the media, he decided over the last few weeks to apply for the degree-granting program for special students by the deadline of May 1, Mrs. Maxwell said. Mrs. Maxwell said the backlash this spring had deeply affected Mr. Hashemi. She described him as a low-key person who left school after the fourth grade and earned a high school equivalency degree in Pakistan. When he was suddenly the object of attention from other Yale students and from the news media in recent months, Mrs. Maxwell said, he found the experience traumatic; he was uncertain whether he would remain at Yale. Some supporters are worried that it might not be safe for Mr. Hashemi to return home, as he plans to do after the spring semester ends this month. Mrs. Maxwell and other supporters said there had been speculation in Pakistan, where his family lives in exile, that he must have been an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency if he had managed to get admitted by Yale after serving the Taliban. If admitted to the degree-granting program, he would have many of the privileges and responsibilities of Yale undergraduates, although he could not live in university housing. He is likely to learn within a month or two whether he will be admitted, university officials said. The program is designed for people who have not begun or completed their college education because of family or job responsibilities. In a statement released two weeks ago, Mr. Levin, the Yale president, said the standard for admission to the degree-granting program this year would be the same as for regular candidates for admission to Yale College, ''recognizing that in assessing more mature candidates, relatively more weight should be given to achievement than potential.'' Some students and faculty applaud Mr. Hashemi's presence at Yale. ''What the United States is doing in the Middle East is to try to support and encourage people all across the region who want to be part of states that are good international citizens and want to be engaged with the international community,'' said Charles Hill, a lecturer in international affairs and a retired veteran of the State Department. ''Mr. Hashemi wants to shape his future on the side of the line in the region that wants to be legitimate contributors to international peace and order.'' But the alumni who created the blog, Nail Yale, have assailed the university for admitting Mr. Hashemi to any of its programs. The blog's name refers to the Taliban's banning of nail polish and to accusations that Taliban enforcers pulled out the nails of women who wore polish. ''We wanted to make it clear that alumni were upset about this,'' said Clint Taylor, one of the blog's founders. ''It's a betrayal of Yale's core values. We're still at war with the Taliban. They're massacring schoolteachers in Afghanistan and fighting American soldiers.'' David Cameron, a political science professor, said in an e-mail message that if Yale decides to admit Mr. Hashemi, he hoped it would state clearly that Mr. Hashemi would learn about ''values the Taliban rejected: democracy, the rule of law, ethnic and religious toleration, human rights, and the equality of men and women.''"