My Father's Faith
Mohammed Naseehu Ali '95 wrote a poignant essay for The New Yorker called "My Muslim Father's Faith In America" in which he mentioned his time at Bennington.
Ali writes: "By the time I left [high school in Michigan], I had all but abandoned my ill feelings toward Americans, even if I continued to have doubts about America itself. But it wasn’t only the generosity and decency of ordinary American folks that changed my perspective. It was a conversation I had with my father during a visit home in the summer of 1991, the year I began attending Bennington, a small liberal-arts college in Vermont."
He continues, "Father...impressed on me that the scholarship funds I had obtained from Bennington College were donated by wealthy Americans specifically to pay for the schooling of African students like me. In his mind, such philanthropy was as Islamic as building a mosque."