It was more than a little puzzling seeing Rahmatullah Hashemi’s self-satisfied mug smiling at me from the front page of the Yale Daily News on Monday. Admittedly, I would not have recognized his face had I not read about him the day before in the New York Times Magazine. The last time I saw that Cheshire grin was in Michael Moore’s otherwise manipulative film, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which for all its demagoguery and factual errors, at least captured the odiousness of the Taliban.

In a clip lasting about 30 seconds, an indignant woman confronts Mr. Hasehemi, who no less than five years ago was a chief spokesperson for the Islamist theocracy, at a public event. “You have imprisoned the women … it’s a horror,” she shouts, tearing off a burka in protest. “I’m really sorry to your husband,” Mr. Hashemi answered. “He might have a very difficult time with you.”

Back in the days of the Taliban, any woman who dared address a man in such fashion would have known what she had coming: acid thrown on her face, if she was lucky. More likely, however, her punishment would have been death.

In 2000, at the age of 21, Mr. Hashemi became a “roving ambassador” for the Taliban. The Angelina Jolie of the Islamofascist set, if you will. He toured the United States defending the “achievements” of the Taliban, and even visited Yale in 2001. The Times article reports that in the months leading up to 9/11, Mr. Hashemi had a falling out with the Taliban; he became disillusioned by their banning of neckties, chessboards, and the Internet because he “wanted something good for Afghanistan.” Presumably, then, Taliban policy prior to the spring 2001 crackdowns – which included the public torture and murder of homosexuals, the forced veiling of women, and the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues – were all “good for Afghanistan.” Attempting to show his intellectual growth, Mr. Hashemi told the Yale Daily News on Monday that he “really support[s]” free speech, and that “I did and do believe in women’s rights. Yes, women should be able to vote.” How progressive.

There is little evidence to believe that Mr. Hashemi’s beliefs have changed all that much; indeed, the available information indicates that his views on world affairs hardly differ from the ignorant conspiracy theories so common today in the Muslim world. In a recent article posted on the Web site of the organization sponsoring his stay in the United States, he writes, “Seemingly, like the poor Taliban, common Americans are ignorant of the fact that their franchise state of Israel in the Middle East is serving as an American Al qaida against the Arab world.”

There are certainly students on campus who hold beliefs that outrage the majority of the student body; some of them even deign to print those beliefs on a regular basis in the campus press. But I have yet to come across a student who seriously supports the sort of abject horrors that the Taliban inflicted upon the Afghan people, never mind one who worked for a regime that committed such acts.

On Tuesday, Eric Knibbs, a graduate student, Class of 2010, wrote in the Yale Daily News, “I was not aware that ideology could disqualify a Yale applicant.” My own view is that it should not. But an applicant’s employment as an agent for a declared enemy of the United States – one that aided and abetted a terrorist attack that took the lives of some 3,000 civilians, no less – is another matter.

The Yale administration believes that Yale students should feel lucky to have Mr. Hashemi around. According to the Times, Yale once had “another foreigner of Rahmatullah’s caliber apply for special-student status,” but according to a former dean of admissions, Richard Shaw, “We lost him to Harvard. I don’t want that to happen again.”Who was this elusive applicant? A member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party? A protege of Robert Mugabe?

Don’t expect a word of protest from our feminist and gay groups, who now have in their midst an actual, live remnant of one of the most misogynistic and homophobic regimes ever. They’re busy hunting bogeymen like frat parties and single-sex bathrooms. The answer Mr. Hashemi gave five years ago at Yale when asked about the lack of women’s rights in Afghanistan, “American women don’t have the right not to find images of themselves in swimsuits on the side of a bus,” is the sort of sophistry likely to curry favor among Yale’s feminist activists, who make every effort to paint American society as chauvinistic while refraining from criticism of non-Western cultures. To do so would be an act of “cultural imperialism,” and we cannot have that at an enlightened place like Yale.

I personally would like to know whether Mr. Hasehmi supports the flattening of homosexuals via brick walls, which was one of the ways that the Taliban dealt with homosexual men. Having written a newspaper column for nearly my entire time at Yale, I suspect that some of my peers would like to see me flattened by a wall. But I doubt any of them faithfully served a regime that actually carried out such a practice as official policy.

Purportedly, Mr. Hasehemi is here so that we all can learn from him. Mr. Shaw, who gushed that his interview with Mr. Hashemi “was one of the most interesting I’ve ever had,” told the Times that, “this is a person to be reckoned with and who could educate us about the world.” It strikes me that Rahmatullah Hashemi has much more to learn from Americans and Yale than we do from him.

Mr. Kirchick, a former intern at The New York Sun, is a senior atYale and a columnist for the Yale Daily News.