STEP – Science, Technology, and Education in Pakistan

Yaser Ajmal Sheikh is an Assistant Research Professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Central Florida in 2006 and is a recipient of the Hillman award for excellence in computer science research.

Last month representatives from Carnegie Mellon University met with the administrators of various Pakistani universities, and the leadership at the HEC, to explore the possibility of establishing mutually beneficial collaboration between universities in Pakistan and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. Read the rest of this entry »

A new study published in the February issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, considers the impact of education and income on support for suicide bombings, spanning the geographic spectrum of Muslim-majority countries; in East Asia (Indonesia), South Asia (Pakistan), the Middle East (Lebanon and Jordan), Eurasia (Turkey), and North Africa (Morocco). Read the rest of this entry »

STEP: Informed, perhaps, by your experiences as a student at MIT during the Vietnam War, you have spoken in favor of re-establishing student unions in Pakistani Universities. Could you briefly make the case for re-instituting student unions in Pakistan?

PH: Meaningful discussions on social, cultural, and political issues must be brought back to campuses. Young people are idealists; in fact, there is no other way for them unless they are brain dead. They naturally dream of what a good society is; a society that is way better than what they have inherited from their elders. So, it is perfectly healthy for students to have a self-image of being agents for positive change. Once aware, they soon realize that individuals count for little — only organized actions do. But organized actions require a culture of civilized debate. In my 36 years of teaching at Quaid-e-Azam University, I have never felt that rational, civilized debate with or between students is impossible. Of course, there have been exceptional situations, such as after the 1998 nuclear tests, but students will generally listen to the other side in a civilized way.
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Editor’s Note: Pervez Hoodbhoy is head of the Physics Department at Quaid-e-Azam University and a prominent social activist in Pakistan. We conducted this interview through email correspondence over a few weeks, to get his perspective on the state of higher education in Pakistan. This is the first in a two part series. The second part is shared here.

STEP: According to recent estimates, less than half of Pakistan’s population is literate, less than half have access to basic sanitation, and the economy is strangled by debt. In context of this, what is the social relevance and value of the modern university, with its emphasis on research and higher learning, in Pakistan today?

PH: Pakistan’s social indicators are indeed abysmal. But no country can wait for everything and everybody to get up to speed before making universities. Nor should it, because that would essentially mean waiting forever. But we should remember that there is a difference in the purposes that universities serve in countries like Pakistan, and in advanced countries like the US. The latter have knowledge-driven economies, and universities function as the engines of progress. They are the fountainheads of modern science, and of new technologies that have changed the world more in the past fifty years than the previous ten thousand years.
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At this year’s International Science Olympiads, Pakistan’s team racked up the awards with seven bronze medals and two honorable mentions. The teams, selected by the STEM Careers Programme (SCP), participated in the International Biology (IBO), Chemistry (IChO), Mathematics (IMO), and Physics (IPhO) Olympiads. Congratulations to the bronze medal winners: Mahym Mansoor and Tayyaba Maqbool Malik in Biology, Saman Zia and Nayha Enver in Chemistry, Waqar Ali Syed in Mathematics, and Zain Ul Abideen Ali Khas in Physics. It is note-worthy that four of the six winners were women — note-worthy because the pool from which the girls were selected was far smaller than the pool from which the boys were selected. In all, 56 countries participated in IBO, 64 countries participated in IChO, 104 countries in IMO, and 72 countries participated in IPhO.

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A new program funded by USAID, called Pre-STEP (Pre-Service Teachers Education Program), was launched on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009, to improve the quality of education in Punjab. The $75 million initiative involves Punjab’s Ministry of Education, the Higher Education Commission, and the Federal Ministry of Education. [Note: STEP is not affiliated with this program] Read the rest of this entry »

IEEE INMIC 2009 is being organized once again, this time by the folks at MAJU and UET, Taxila:

IEEE INMIC is held every year and INMIC 2009 will be the 13th in the series. INMIC has become Pakistan’s flagship technical conference with a broad scope, thereby inviting interest of a large audience. The conference targets research presentations by academic and professional researchers, and also includes a series of tutorials, enabling participants to learn about the latest trends in technology. Research contributions are expected from the participants, covering various disciplines under IEEE’s domain, including technical papers, panel discussions, tutorials and project exhibitions. For all submitted papers, the review criteria include significance of the problem, novelty, clarity, completeness, and accuracy.

As a venue for research, a multi-topic conference like this one is necessarily going to have substandard work: researchers with good work aren’t going to publish here because the audience will not be able to fully appreciate their contribution, and the related scientific sub-community (who would cite their work) aren’t going to be in attendance and therefore won’t be aware of the research. Read the rest of this entry »

This Frontline short documentary reported by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy examines the impact of the Taliban in Pakistan “out of the mouths of babes.” The narrative is highly engaging and is a searing indictment of the Taliban. The documentary makes an interesting statement on the battle against the Taliban: it is as much for the minds of the future citizenry of Pakistan as it is for square footage of land.

The swelling refugee camps of internally displaced people squeezed from their homes by US drone attacks, and faultlines between the Pakistan Army and the advancing Taliban are also examined. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre places the number of these refugees at upto 900,000 people, near half of whom may be children; out of their homes, and out of school.

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