What is it with Columbia University and Middle Eastern despots?
Back in 2007, the school’s president, Lee Bollinger, rolled out the magic carpet for Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who used the Ivy League platform to deny the Holocaust and question whether al Qaeda was really responsible for 9/11.
Now Columbia has admitted a 22-year-old former “senior adviser” to Syria’s murderous dictator, Bashar al-Assad, to a spot in its ultra-competitive School of International and Public Affairs.
And it certainly didn’t hurt that she had the backing of ABC News’ Barbara Walters and former ABC News head Richard Wald.
As just-released e-mails disclose, Walters went to bat for Sheherezad Jaafari — the daughter of Syria’s UN ambassador, and Assad’s onetime press aide — who’d wangled an exclusive interview with the dictator for her.
Jaafari lost her privileged position after Assad didn’t like some of the questions Walters asked.
So Walters first tried to get Jaafari a job on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight.
Then she contacted Wald about landing her a spot at the prestigious Columbia grad school, where four out of five applicants are rejected.
“I will get them to give her special attention and I am sure they will take her,” Wald — a lecturer at Columbia’s journalism school — assured Walters.
In pressing Jaafari’s qualifications, Walters described her as “brilliant, beautiful” — a curiously sexist point to raise — and noted that she “speaks five languages.”
Moreover, she declared, “she is only 21 but had [Assad’s] ear and confidence.”
But why on earth should a trusted adviser to a murderous dictator who has slaughtered 15,000 of his own people be considered for admission to a prestigious school of international affairs?
After all, it’s not as if Jaafari was so upset by the blood soaking Syria’s streets that she resigned her lofty position.
Columbia and its president, Bollinger, owe an explanation to the memories of the innocent dead of Houla and al-Qubair.
So, for that matter, does Barbara Walters.