On May 20, they’ll be among the graduates listening to first lady Laura Bush deliver the commencement address at Roger Williams. A supporter of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women, Mrs. Bush will celebrate these pioneers - some of the first to complete four-year scholarships offered through the initiative. Launched in 2002 by Paula Nirschel, wife of Roger Williams’s President Roy Nirschel, it has grown to include 10 American colleges that will sponsor 30 scholars next year.
“We are all extremely committed to returning to Afghanistan, because we want to make sure that the next generation won’t face the same problems, such as lack of education and not feeling secure enough,” says Sahar, whose family split up for a number of years so that she, like many other girls, could continue her schooling in Pakistan during the Taliban’s reign. Families who could not leave but were still devoted to educating their daughters were sometimes able to do so in underground schools in Afghanistan.
These are the kind of women who weren’t welcome at Yale.