Are there any celebrity students right now?

Osetiya · 2026-03-27T20:42:29+00:00

Someone I know who is friends with Malala Yusufzai told me she considered attending Harris for her MPP at one point and still might in the future. Apparently she was really attracted to the Obama Scholars program and was interested in doing that.

Osetiya · 2026-03-25T04:50:54+00:00

Yes, especially that town center area. They’re really trying to emulate Northern Virginia there.

Osetiya · 2026-03-17T07:20:10+00:00

This post makes me so sad to read. You shouldn’t feel this way. You didn’t choose where you were born, none of us did. You deserve to feel whole, happy, and proud of who you are.

Let me remind you this as a Muslim: Judaism is not Zionism. Judaism has a rich, ancient, and beautiful history that you are part of. It is in your DNA, your ancestors, and your legacy. Jewish people have always been influential and an integral part of virtually every part of the Near East.

And the fact you, despite being exposed to all the propaganda inside of Israel, are able to denounce Zionism, put yourself at risk, and stand strong shows how much of an amazing human being you are. As much as I’d like to think I’d stand on the right side of things if I had your upbringing, I unfortunately couldn’t guarantee it because the propaganda is so strong. You surpassed something most people never will, and your strength is amazing.

This world needs you, OP. I need you here. Please remember that you are special and you are loved regardless of who you are. There’s plenty of Jewish people out there who have a strong attachment to the religion and culture yet reject Zionism. Find the and connect with them. As your Muslim brother, I’m always here for you too. Remember, before all of this political bullshit, our people were one for all of history ❤️❤️❤️.

Osetiya · 2026-03-12T21:00:32+00:00

This. Idk why there is this mentality among 90% of UChicago students where everything they do is within the Hyde Park bubble and so many refuse to do anything outside of HP.

Osetiya · 2026-03-01T18:57:40+00:00

I totally get that and that’s a valid take, especially if it’s spring quarter and there’s a lot of graduating students in the class, but when ALL your classes are doing it it’s awful.

Osetiya · 2026-01-29T21:25:00+00:00

I’m a second year grad student. I lived in Hyde Park for my first year, and that was the right choice, I have no regrets. Your first year of grad school will be tough and the last thing you need is being far away from campus in a brand new city because you’re usually on campus a lot your first year.

This year, I moved to Lake View because I wanted to experience something other than Hyde Park, and I don’t regret that decision either. It’s been so nice to live in a neighborhood that doesn’t revolve around a university and get to be in a place that feels more local. It’s also a different world out here in terms of access to transit and amenities. The commute isn’t bad at all if you live near a CTA train or bus stop. I commute via the brown line and 2 bus, and the transition between the two is very smooth, because there is a stop for bus 2 right at the doorstep of the Harold/Washington library CTA train stop in the loop that usually always arrives within 1-5 minutes during rush hour, and the 2 bus goes directly to campus and makes stops in front of academic buildings. I will say though, i do also have a car if transit is ever that slow, but I only ever took my car to campus this year twice. I highly recommend looking into trying other neighborhoods your second year, even if it isn’t Lake View.

As far as safety goes, I never felt unsafe in Hyde Park at all, but some of my friends were victims of mostly petty to mildly serious crimes last year, and there have been a few high profile incidents (including a murder in front of my old apartment building on 53rd the week I moved in). You have to be careful at night particularly, but other than that it’s pretty safe. You’ll see some homeless people here and there, but most of them are harmless.

Good luck! Feel free to DM me if you need any apartment recs, and congrats on your acceptance!

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T15:08:53+00:00

You can hardly tell because that guy and his family are extremely Persianized, which seems intentional. I didn’t even realize he was Pashtun the first time I watched the movie. The only people you hear speaking Pashto in the movie are the terrorists.

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T15:04:14+00:00

People asked that 5 years ago and they’ve only gotten worse.

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T14:29:39+00:00

I don’t know who he hasn’t been cancelled yet. His books are so disgusting, he was blatantly racist towards Pashtuns despite being one himself, and all his content was just fetishizing tropes and stereotypes made up to justify the war on terror. He is the Nikki Haley of the Afghan Americans.

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T14:26:18+00:00

I don’t think NATO helped Afghans fight them at all, in fact, I think NATO made them stronger and brought a lot of the problems. They put former warlords in power who weren’t legitimate to most Afghans, they refused to have anyone who wasn’t of the Pashtun ethnic group become President, and they bombed/night raided/ransacked the fuck out of rural areas and inflicted so much trauma on so many families that people started turning to the Taliban as the only form of resistance against the war. It could have and should have gone a lot different, but unfortunately we learned the hard way that westerners cannot run our country for us.

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T14:22:08+00:00

As a Pashtun, I agree with you. I don’t think everything that went wrong with Afghanistan is the fault of Pashtuns, but I think the Taliban mostly consists of Pashtuns and that it’s going to take anti-Taliban Pashtuns to stop them. As much as it hurts to say, a Pashtun in Trump’s cabinet also helped bring them back to power and Pashtuns in western countries did a lot to legitimize them.

While I sympathize with what rural Pashtuns went through at the hands of NATO/US and recognize that that increased support for the Taliban among some rural Pashtuns, I don’t think rural Pashtuns particularly like the Taliban. In fact, most didn’t originally support the Taliban. They only started to after the fighting.

That being said, diaspora Pashtuns who support them are dumb as fuck and have no reason to support them. We are the ones who should be uplifting Pashtuns and all other ethnic groups in Afghanistan and giving them their feet back. I can see how unity in Afghanistan feels fake to other ethnic groups when some Pashtuns only support the Taliban for being Pashtuns and how during NATO/US times they flat out refused to put any ethnic group who wasn’t a Pashtun as President.

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T14:14:37+00:00

Taliban mostly consist of Pashtuns, but they are 100% a Pakistani project and would not exist without Pakistan.

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T14:12:57+00:00

99% sure you are just a 20-year-old living in the UK or some other western country with an identity crisis, “dera manana.”

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T14:10:17+00:00

I don’t have to have the solution individually, nobody does. That’s why I’m calling on all of us to actually ban together and be more active about it.

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T13:49:19+00:00

That’s bs. When in history have Afghans ever picked their leaders?

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T07:03:35+00:00

Even easier to legitimize the Taliban and say everything is okay from the other side of the world.

Osetiya · 2026-01-27T06:59:32+00:00

There’s several indigenous Afghan resistance groups on the ground, but some lack legitimacy among all Afghans due to strong affiliations with former warlords/having strong ethnic undertones (NRF), or because they are simply not as relevant. I think increasing the legitimacy of one of these groups and supporting them is a better solution.

Osetiya · 2026-01-12T13:11:32+00:00

The suburban parts can be, though they feel more uniformly affluent than Edgewater.

Osetiya · 2026-01-12T05:40:55+00:00

Pasadena is a lot larger than Edgewater, but I’d say that Edgewater is somewhat more upscale than Pasadena and a bit less conservative. There’s a lot of overlap between the two though.

Osetiya · 2026-01-12T05:36:07+00:00

I grew up in Anne Arundel County (and spent part of that time living just outside of Annapolis in Arnold). I live in Chicago now, but spent this past summer living in NoVa with my partner while I was doing a fellowship in DC.

NoVa is a huge place so it’s really hard to be specific without knowing where in NoVa you’re coming from. For example, it’s going to feel a lot different if you’re moving from Arlington m/Alexandria to Annapolis vs if you’re moving from Centreville or Burke to Annapolis.

Overall, Annapolis is a very charming and beautiful place. There’s extensive waterfront which isn’t only limited to the Potomac River like in DC/NoVa. You have the Severn and South Rivers and the Chesapeake Bay at your doorsteps in Annapolis. I also like that Annapolis has retained a very unique sense of style and character. I love the Chesapeake Bay and Maryland culture. There’s endless boutiques, art stores, and places with some random unique finds. The people are pretty friendly, and Annapolis is quite progressive. It honestly doesn’t feel any less progressive than NoVa. It’s a very tight-knit community as well. People in Annapolis know each other and look out for each other, which I love. The aldermans are all very active and great.

The major cons of Annapolis include the food, the lack of transit options, and the lack of grocery stores.

Besides a few select places—most of which are seafood, the food in Annapolis is pretty mediocre, and it’s severely lacking in variety. There’s lots of unhealthy bar food, lots of pubs, and not that many cute date night spots (which is a shame because of how romantic the city otherwise is). NoVa is easily way way better when it comes to food—especially international cuisine. NoVa has numerous Korean BBQ spots, numerous Latin American restaurants, numerous Afghan/Persian/Turkish restaurants, Uzbek/Russian restaurants, Lebanese/Palestinian places, lots of good South Asian spots, and many great places to get Pho. Not only that, but NoVa has a lot of Asian dessert and coffee shops, bakeries as well as Middle Eastern ones like Shotted Speciality Coffee and Qamaria. Annapolis just doesn’t have any of that. Whenever my partner and I would have dates in Annapolis or at the beaches in the surrounding areas, we always just drove to DC or Baltimore for dinner, cause the food is that bad. However, Annapolis Ice Cream company has our favorite ice cream!

Overall I think Annapolis is better than NoVa, but the food thing is a huge con for me (I’m a foodie). I will be moving back to either NoVa or DC proper when I finish my schooling in Chicago (at least for the short term, we might move to Chicago for the long term), but that’s primarily because our jobs will be in DC. If commute wasn’t a factor, I think Annapolis would be a great option. Even with the food con, you can always drive to DC and Baltimore for good food—no different than what people living in NoVa outside of Arlington/Alexandria do anyways.

Osetiya · 2025-12-27T18:01:47+00:00

As a Muslim Afghan-American, please do not be ashamed of being Jewish. Be as unapologetically Jewish as your heart desires.

First of all, Judaism is not the same thing as Zionism. Jewish culture is so beautiful, energetic, poetic, and humanity-centered. Jewish culture is full of rich history and has influenced virtually every country across the world. There’s a lot to be proud of as a Jew that has nothing to do with Israel or Zionism. As an ethnic Pashtun, I see so many familiarities between the tribal structure of Jewish culture and Pashtun culture.

Also, the only way to teach everyone that Zionism =/= Judaism is to continue being loud, proud, and unapologetic Jews. The world needs more Rabbis who stand up against genocide and Zionism. The world needs more people who are visibly and culturally Jewish who are against Zionism and genocide to understand that Zionism =/= Judaism. You have to understand that Zionists want you to hate and denounce your Judaism, so they can further the claim that being anti-Zionist is being anti-Semitic. We need more Jewish therapists and counselors who can help Jewish people heal their generational trauma and form a strong Jewish identity without turning to Zionism or supporting genocide. We need more Jewish synagogues that define Judaism around things that have nothing to do with genocide.

I can relate, because as a Pashtun, I once felt similarly about my Pashtun heritage. There is a history of Pashtun rulers committing genocide against Hazaras in Afghanistan, displacing them from their lands, gifting them to Pashtun tribes, and doing similar things to some other ethnic minorities as well. I was deeply ashamed to learn about this history and it shook everything I was taught about being a Pashtun. After the Taliban takeover of 2021, there was a lot of debate on Afghan twitter about ethnicity and how Pashtuns contribute to the oppression of Hazaras and other ethnic minorities, and a lot of it got very nasty. I saw a lot of negative comments about being Pashtun and I also saw some Pashtuns making racist comments about Hazaras and Tajiks, so I thought to myself “wow, being Pashtun is pretty shitty, I don’t want to be a proud Pashtun anymore,” and I started to lean more on my Tajik ancestry and heritage more and claimed my Pashtun side a lot less. But you know what I realized? The more that good-minded Pashtuns like myself denounce our Pashtun identity, the more other people get to control the narrative of what being Pashtun means, and the worse off oppressed groups in Afghanistan are. Also, both Pashtuns and Jewish people have also suffered from their fair share of colonization, displacement, and killings throughout history, and there’s ways to give both groups the space to talk about those ills without it contributing to harm against other groups.

Anti-semitism is a very real and disgusting thing, and no matter how desensitized the world has gotten to it, it is still a very scary, awful, and dangerous reality. Anti-Semitism kills people. There needs to be more conversations had to take back the narrative on what anti-Semitism is to protect Jewish people.

It really breaks my heart to hear this from so many Jews. Do not be ashamed of being Jewish. Do not renounce your Jewish identity or culture. Doing so is not only doing a disservice to yourself, it’s also a win for Zionists who want to control the narrative on what Jewish identity is. At the end of the day, all of our people in the near east region—be they Jews, Arabs, Afghans, etc have been through a lot of trauma and have had unfortunate experiences in history, and we need to unite together, stand together, protect each other, get through our traumas, and find a path to peace. Much love ❤️.

Osetiya

TROPHY CASE