It is alleged that Amin became radicalised during his second stay in the United States in 1962, when he enrolled in a work-study group at the University of Wisconsin. Amin studied in the doctoral programme at the Columbia University Teachers College, but started to neglect his studies in favour of politics; in 1963 he became head of the Afghan students' association at the college. When he returned to Afghanistan in the mid-1960s, the route flew to Afghanistan by way of Moscow. There, Amin met the Afghan ambassador to the Soviet Union, his old friend Ali Ahmad Popel, a previous Afghan Minister of Education. During his short stay, Amin became even more radicalised. Some people, Nabi Misdaq for instance, do not believe he travelled through Moscow, but rather West Germany and Lebanon. By the time he had returned to Afghanistan, the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had already held its founding congress, which was in 1965. Amin ran as a candidate for the PDPA in the 1965 parliamentary election, and lost by a margin of less than fifty votes.