15-year-old of the yaer

Malala Yousafzai: Don’t Name School for Me

Photo: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images

While we were debating whether Malala Yousafzai — the Pakistani girls’-education-rights activist who was shot by the Taliban outside her school earlier this year — would be the first female Time Person of the Year since 1986 (she wound up losing to President Barack Obama), the 15-year-old was asking Pakistan to reverse its decision to rename a college in her honor. Calling from London, where she is still being treated from gunshot wounds, she made the request so that other students would not be the victims of similar militant attacks, the AP reports. Taliban representatives have said she was targeted for her promotion of girls’ education and other Western values, and already students have broken into the school in her hometown to tear down her picture and boycotted classes in her hometown, saying that renaming the college “endangered their lives.” Yeah, that’s probably not worth “winning” some silly annual magazine publicity drive, either.

Malala Yousafzai: Don’t Name School for Me