Sheherazad Jaafari, the former press aide for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is currently enrolled at The New School for Public Engagement’s Julien J. Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs, as revealed by multiple news sources this week.
Jaafari, 22, had planned to attend Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, having been accepted there this spring. But after backlash from Columbia’s student community due to her links with the Assad regime, Jaafari chose not to attend the school in order “to avoid being harassed,” as she told Columbia’s Communiqué magazine in September.
“I am not willing to comment on any of this craziness,” Jaafari wrote in an email to the Free Press when asked to comment on the media attention surrounding her enrollment at The New School.
New School spokesperson Sam Biederman declined to comment on Jaafari’s enrollment at The New School, but told Buzzfeed that the university “respect[s] the privacy of our students,” adding that “any admissions decisions are based on merit.”
Rashad al-Dabbagh, a spokesperson for the Syrian American Council — a grassroots organization based in Illinois that opposes the Assad regime — told Communiqué that “any institution [Jaafari] enrolls in would be indirectly complicit in supporting the [Assad] regime.”
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