Yale wins Campus Outrage Award

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The Collegiate Network has given its annual award to highlight the negative influence of political correctness to Yale University for enrolling a former Taliban official with a fourth-grade education.

"Yale pursued [Sayed Rahmatullah] Hashemi's admission in the name of that sacred cow, diversity, which now appears to extend not only to people of various sexes, creeds, races, ethnicities, sexual preferences and practices, but also to enemy combatants who make war upon the United States," the conservative group said.

The winner of the second-place 2006 Campus Outrage Award, also called the Polly Award -- "Polly" being an abbreviation of the term "political correctness" -- was DePaul University, which suspended adjunct professor Thomas Klocek, without a hearing, after he attempted to debate students handing out pro-Palestinian literature.

The group also said DePaul criticized campus College Republicans after the group organized a protest against liberal activist Ward Churchill, who was delivering a speech at the university. Mr. Churchill, a University of Colorado ethnic studies professor, last year wrote that the U.S. deserved to be attacked on September 11, 2001.

"Apparently, free speech is allowed at DePaul only as long as it accords with the political views of the university administration," read the Collegiate Network's response.

The other five award recipients include Stanford University, the College of the Holy Cross, the entire University of California system, the University of Iowa and Canisius College.

Stanford and Holy Cross were singled out after administrators tried to "silence the independent voices" of their conservative student newspapers, the Stanford Review and the Fenwick Review, respectively, for articles that criticized liberal causes.

The Collegiate Network criticizes the University of California system, which represents 10 campuses with 200,000 students, for its policy of refusing to allocate college credit to high-school students in Christian schools who have completed courses using textbooks published by A Beka Book, which makes Christian school materials.

The University of Iowa and Canisius College were criticized for September 11, 2001, related events. The University of Iowa held a self-described "Peacefest" on September 11, 2005.

Canisius College denied a request by the Young America's Foundation to place 3,000 American flags on the campus quad as part of the foundation's "9/11: Never Forget Project." The university said the display could damage its sprinkler system.