Revolutionary, humanist, and scientist, Faheem Hussain embodied the political and social ferment of the late 1960′s. With a Ph.D that he received in 1966 from Imperial College London, he had been well-placed for a solid career anywhere in the world. In a profession where names matter, he had worked under the famous P.T. Mathews in the group headed by the even better known Abdus Salam. After his degree, Faheem spent two years at the University of Chicago. This gave him a chance to work with some of the world’s best physicists, but also brought him into contact with the American anti-Vietnam war movement and a powerful wave of revolutionary Marxist thinking. Even decades later, Faheem would describe himself as an “unreconstructed Marxist”. Participating in the mass anti-war demonstrations at UC had stirred his moral soul; he felt the urge to do more than just physics. Now married to Jane Steinfels, a like-minded soul who he met in Chicago, Faheem decided to return to Pakistan.

Faheem and Jane made an amazing couple. Fully immersed in the outstanding causes of the times, they seemed to have a limitless amount of revolutionary energy. Long before I knew them, they had been protesting against the Pakistan Army’s actions in East Pakistan. As Faheem would recount, this was a lonely fight. Many Marxists in those times, inspired by Mao’s China, chose to understand the issue in geopolitical terms rather than as a popular struggle for independence. Some leftists ended up supporting the army’s mass murder of Bengalis.

With Bangladesh now a reality, things moved on. Bhutto’s rhetoric of socialism and justice for the poor had inspired nascent trade union movements to sprout across Pakistan’s cities. Many, however, quickly turned into organizations for labour control rather than emancipation.

There were genuinely independent ones too, such as the Peoples Labour Federation (PLF), an independent Rawalpindi based trade union that saw through Bhutto’s shallow rhetoric. In the early 1970′s, Faheem and Jane were highly influential in this organization, sometimes providing security and cover to its hunted leadership. Iqbal Bali, who passed away in the middle of this year, would vividly recount those days.

Very soon, I joined the small group of leftwing activists that looked up to this couple for instruction and guidance. We formed study groups operating under the PLF, both for self-education and for spreading the message through small study groups of industrial workers. Some, including myself, branched out further, working in distant villages. Gathering material support for the Baloch nationalists, who were fighting an army rejuvenated by Bhutto, was yet another goal for the group. The dream was to bring about a socialist revolution in Pakistan.

All this crashed to an end with Bhutto’s death by hanging in 1979 and the subsequent consolidation of General Zia-ul-Haq’s coup. Pakistan’s Dark Age had just begun. Although Bhutto’s regime had turned repressive and violent in its last desperate days, it was gentle in comparison with what was to follow. With dissent savagely muzzled, the only option was to operate underground. On 3 November 1981, three of our QAU colleagues and friends were caught, imprisoned, and savaged by the military regime. Jamil Omar, a lecturer in computer science and the “ring leader” – was tortured. Two others – Tariq Ahsan and Mohammed Salim – were also imprisoned and their careers destroyed. Their crime was involvement in the secret publication of “Jamhoori Pakistan”, a 4-page newsletter that demanded return to democracy and the end of army rule. A triumphant Zia-ul-Haq went on Pakistan Television, congratulated the men who had succeeded in arresting the teachers, and pledged to “eliminate the cancer of politics” from Quaid-e-Azam University.

Although Faheem was not directly involved in “Jamhoori Pakistan”, we knew he was being closely watched by the intelligence and could have chosen to hide. Instead, with characteristic fearlessness, he did all that was possible to help locate the abducted teachers, and then to secure their release. Tariq Ahsan wrote to me from Canada that “His solidarity during those long years was an invaluable source of support for our families and friends.”

But the struggle took its toll. By the mid 1980′s, Faheem was in the doldrums. Situated in an academically barren environment, he was able to publish little research of worth. Politically, there was no chance of doing anything significant in the climate of repression. Things had gone downhill in personal terms as well – his marriage with Jane was coming apart. To the great sorrow of their friends, the couple parted ways and Jane returned to America. Encouraged by Faheem, she had written school books on Pakistani history that are still sold and used today. In 1989, Faheem left QAU formally but his involvement in academic and political matters had already dropped off in the year or two before that.

From this low point in his life, Faheem struggled upwards. Initially in Germany, and then elsewhere later, he now concentrated solely upon his profession and was able to learn an impressive amount of new physics.

Professor Abdus Salam, who by now had received a Nobel Prize for his work, invited Faheem to become a permanent member of the theoretical physics group at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy. Faheem remained there until his retirement in 2004. Getting this position was no mean achievement: theoretical physics is a fiercely competitive and notoriously difficult subject. Faheem was the first Pakistani to publish a research paper in one of its most challenging areas – superstring theory.

With a cheerful and positive disposition, and an abiding concern for the welfare of others, Faheem quickly became popular at the ICTP. His laughter would resonate in the institute’s corridors. With time, he took on administrative responsibilities as well and was instrumental in setting up a “Diploma Programme” that admits students from third world countries for advanced studies in various areas. Now married to Sara, a beautiful and even-tempered Italian woman, he was equally comfortable with Italians and Pakistanis or, for that matter, Indians. To Faheem, a cultural amphibian, differences between nations carried no meaning.

And then came retirement time. What to do? I wrote to Faheem: come back!

He agreed. Finding money was not a problem – Pakistan’s higher education was experiencing a budgetary boom. But his old university, plagued by base rivalries and a contemptuous disdain for learning, refused. Specious arguments were given to prevent one of its own founding members, now one of Pakistan’s most distinguished and active physicists, from being taken on the faculty. Initially at the National Centre for Physics in Islamabad, Faheem was eventually offered a position at the newly established science faculty of LUMS in Lahore.

Faheem’s unpretentious mannerisms and gentleness of spirit ensured that LUMS too was enamored of him. Asad Naqvi, one of Pakistan’s leading physicists and a faculty member at LUMS, wrote to me upon hearing of Faheem’s death: “I am lost after hearing this. I only knew him for about 5 years, and in that short time, I had grown really fond of him. We are all poorer today, having lost such a lovely person who touched us so deeply.”

Surely, there shall be many other such tributes from Faheem’s many friends. But, to be true to him as well as my own self, I must admit that in later years we did disagree on some important things – “unreconstructed Marxism” to me is an anachronism, a relic of the 1960′s and still earlier, meaningless in a world that has become far more complex than Marx could have possibly imagined. Nor can I reflexively support today’s so-called “anti-imperialism” of the left that ends up supporting the forces of regressive fundamentalism. But let these issues stand wherever they do.

Why is it necessary for friends to agree upon everything?

From atoms to atoms – death is inevitable, the final victory of entropy over order. Meaningless? No! To have lived a full life, to have experienced its richness, to have struggled not just for one-self but for others as well, and to have earned the respect and love of those around you. That is a life worth living for. Faheem, my friend, you are gone. May you now rest in peace, with a job well done.

Unfortunately, I find the response as unsatisfying as the original article. Since Nature is unwilling to accord me a chance for a satisfactory reply on its pages, I shall clarify the basis of my criticism in some detail here.

In the said article, strong conclusions have been derived from weak data. The authors have not dared to ask the basic questions whose answers are essential for ascertaining whether there has been actual progress in Pakistan’s higher education system and, if so, by how much. Instead, in giving a thumbs-up, numbers have been quoted that have doubtful significance. Take, for instance, the claim that:

“In mathematics, for example, an average paper by a Pakistani author is cited around 20% more than the worldwide average for the discipline”.

Before returning to what some of the right questions might have been, let me give two reasons why the above claim – even if true – carries little meaning.

First, self-citation is a far more serious problem than the authors are willing to acknowledge. It is also one that they admit to not having investigated. The data on Pakistani research papers shows that subtracting out self-citations drastically cuts down on actual citations – there are often 2-3 self-citations for every real one! The reader is urged to carefully study my email correspondence of last year with Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman (see appendix below) who, at the time when he was HEC chairman, had made similar claims that I disputed as being false. To interested readers, I have made available (in pdf form) the Thomson Scientific data that I have quoted in my correspondence here (1998-2003) and here (2003-2008).

Second, many authors of the relatively more cited mathematics papers from Pakistani institutions are not Pakistani nationals. High salaries offered to foreign faculty by the HEC brought to Pakistan a large number of well established mathematicians on short-term contracts from Russia, Poland, Ukraine, and China. This was probably a good thing to do – in spite of the difficulty they had in communicating in an alien language and their consequent inability to teach well. Their papers, however, do not reflect mathematics in Pakistan. One sees a similar phenomenon in Saudi Arabia where foreigners are principally responsible for the kingdom’s large number of papers and citations.

In my opinion, instead of focusing on marginal matters, serious research on the state of Pakistani higher education, and of changes therein, would have first established appropriate metrics, and then sought answers, to the following key questions:

1. What is the quality of teaching in Pakistan’s public universities? There is often only a weak correlation between formal qualifications and subject competence, so simply counting PhD degrees is not very helpful in answering this. Far too frequently one sees professors of English who cannot speak or write a single sentence of grammatically correct English, physics professors who are stymied by Newton’s Laws, and biology professors whose knowledge is frozen in some pre-Darwinian age. But does such basic incompetence exist at the 20, 50, or 70 percent-level? Higher? Lower? What evidence exists that the HEC’s reforms improved the situation?
2. Is there evidence that there has been improvement in the selection process for students in public universities, or that of the quality of their graduates? Proof of the latter, judged by asking employers or assessing performance in international tests, would be a clinching argument for the success of HEC reforms.
3. Do campuses enjoy greater academic freedom, more seminars and colloquia, less violence by extremist campus groups, a pleasanter and more relaxed ambiance, and greater transparency in faculty selection? Surely these are critical to any reasonable assessment.

To get answers to questions like these requires extensive field work, and I certainly do not fault the authors for not doing this. But I was surprised that the Nature article, as well as the lead author’s response, merely says that the HEC’s experiment had critics, without citing any specific articles or the substance of those criticisms. There is not even a passing reference to the failed nine-university multi-billion dollar mega-project, tons of unused scientific equipment purchased for unknown reasons, dubious attempts to fund “Quranic Science” (that had to be hastily abandoned after the scheme was exposed), and the explosion in academic corruption set off by per-paper payments. Surely, these should not be brushed aside as “collateral damage”. In another country, those who massively squandered public money would have been thoroughly investigated by independent commissions, not praised for small things.

The Bottom Line: Well-functioning universities are the products of a complex organic and evolutionary process that is internal to a society. Money and facilities matter, but it is much more important for a university to have a forward looking world-view, an open environment, high ethical standards, a sense of collegiality and shared sense of purpose, and good governance practices. Sadly, the Nature article did not even mention these as significant.

Join the Discussion!
What are the correct metrics to measure higher education reform in Pakistan?

Related Posts:

1. Nature’s Coverage of Higher Education Reform in Pakistan: Comments by Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman
2. Nature’s Coverage of Higher Education Reform in Pakistan: A Conversation with Athar Osama
3. Pakistan’s Higher Education Funding Holds Many Lessons for Developing Nations: Nature

Editors Note: Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy is a well-known Pakistani nuclear physicist and political-defence analyst. He is the Professor of High Energy Physics, and the head of the Physics Department at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Prof. Hoodbhoy is a vocal critic of HEC’s policies and their impact. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.

This correspondence between Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman and Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is reproduced below with consents from both parties. It is exclusively concerned with a public matter, has no private content, and is largely focused upon the importance of self-citations.

Dear Dr. Pervez
I have probed into the situation at QAU, and it is quite the opposite of what you claim, as evident from the total publications and the total number of citations, as per above attachments. The HEC was established in October 2002. The funds started coming through from July 2003. The subsequent impact of HEC programs on research publications and citations is indeed amazing. In 2004 the number of publications was only about 120—by 2007 it has risen to about 380—a 300% increase! The citations in 2004 were about 800—-by August 2008 they have increased to about 2200 although we still have 4 months to go before the year ends—I suspect that it will be about 3200 by the end of the year—a 400% increase!

I shall be separately sending you a report after removing self-citations. QAU is also now included in the most cited institutions in the world (please see attachment)—-this was not to 4 years ago.

Please be fair and objective in your assessments. We may have made some mistakes, but much good has happened.
Kind regards
Atta

Dear Dr. Pervez
Following my other email to you this morning, I am now enclosing the citations of QAU after removing self-citations.As you would see, these have risen from only 84 in 2004 to 1413 in 2008 (with still 4 months to go). These will probably be around 1900 by the end of the year—a spectacular ten-fold growth! Dr. Naim has kindly had these searched, so if you have any queries about them, you may like to interact with her. She tells me that the situation is similar in many other universities—a long period of stagnantion
during the 1990s followed by a burst of activity in the last 4-5 years.
Kind regards

Atta

Dear Dr. Atta,

I am sorry about the late response to your three emails. First, thank you for doing whatever you did – the HEC’s notification of 14 July 2008, which specifies 40 percentile as the GRE passing marks, finally reached QAU departments today (without comment from the administration). In these times one has to be grateful for small things…

Regarding your email and the numbers cited therein: I can understand that you would like to feel upbeat about QAU having improved itself as a result of massive infusion of HEC resources. I too would very much like good things to happen, but perhaps one should not allow wishes to become conclusions.

Looking at the data that you had sent me and your inferences, I decided to do a little independent investigation using exactly the same database (ISI Web of Science) and exactly the same keywords (see attachments to this email). Here are the findings:

Period: 1998-2003
Number of papers published by QAU authors in the above period: 631
Number of citations to date: 4540
Number of citations to date with self-citations removed: 2,817

Period: 2003-2008
Number of papers published by QAU authors in the above period: 1482
Number of citations to date: 3667
Number of citations to date with self-citations removed: 1258

Some obvious inferences:

1. There is absolutely no evidence of real citations having increased; if anything, the numbers up to now show the contrary. While the number of real citations of papers published 2003-2008 may increase somewhat with time, currently they are quite a bit less from the earlier period when the HEC and your incentive system did not exist. Please remember that citations are cumulative over years. I have tried to use exact descriptions in the figures cited above. If I am wrong in any detail, or if I have missed something essential, I would like to be corrected. Unfortunately the data does not at all support your rather optimistic remark of “a spectacular ten-fold growth!”
2. The above data also indicates the disturbing fact that most of the time QAU authors cite themselves. Subtracting self-citations drastically cuts down on real citations – there are 2-3 self-citations for every real one!. Looking more minutely at the ISI pages, one also notes that many citations are by other members belonging to the same or other QAU departments. So the number of genuine citations gets cut down even beyond the numbers quoted above (2817, 1258)!

Just to get scales right, here are a few citation numbers from the Stanford Spires data base for Pakistani physicists over the length of their careers:
a) Riazuddin: 1479
b) Ahmed Ali (DESY, Germany): 9873
c) Abdus Salam: 14103

3. You are correct that the number of publications over equal (5-year) time periods has more than doubled relative to pre-HEC times. But this is clearly in response to the monetary incentives offered by PCST/QAU. A publication fever now grips our universities. It is difficult to defend the case that the number of papers published is proportional to the amount of research done.

You are, of course, free to have the data I have quoted above rechecked and I would be happy to answer any question that arises. Finally, please note that publications and citations were not central to my earlier expression of dismay at the quality of QAU education.

What bothers me much more is the lack of analytical and problem-solving abilities of our Ph.D graduates, some honourable exceptions aside. Poor performance in the GREs is one indication of the rot. This fact has indeed worried you a little, as you indicated in an earlier email to me, but I do wish you could understand the real gravity of the situation.

Regards,

Pervez

Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman’s comments on this post can be found here.