Assad aide drops bid to attend US school to 'avoid being harassed' The Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this year that Sheherazad Jaafari, 23, had enlisted the help of Barbara Walters, the veteran television broadcaster, as she applied to the Ivy League institution. Miss Jaafari, who is the daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the UN, worked in Damascus during the fighting last year, advising Mr Assad on how to present his crackdown to the international media. According to Communiqué, a Columbia student newspaper, Miss Jaafari withdrew her application and is now quietly studying at The New School of Social Research, a small university in Manhattan. "I came here to remain anonymous and to not be disturbed," she told the newspaper. Columbia insisted that she was admitted on merit and reportedly offered to allow her to study under a pseudonym, as many children of high-profile international parents do while studying in the US. Miss Jaafari's attendance at the New School has attracted little attention compared to the hostility with which she was met by some at Columbia. "There is more gossip than real opposition to her enrollment," one student said. Miss Jaafari did not respond to an email sent seeking comment. Her father, Bashar Jaafari, has served as Syrian ambassador to the UN since 2006, defending the regime from repeated criticism by the international community over the course of the country's 21-month-old civil war. The family lives in a $5 million (£3 million) townhouse in Manhattan that was once the New York home of Richard Nixon.