HEC Juggernaut and Pervez Hoodbhoy

An interesting debate has been going on revolving around various HEC projects. The debate started with an article “Reforms? What reforms?” by Pervez Hoodbhoy (The News July 7th 2005). In the article, Hoodbhoy criticized several HEC projects clearly stating his reservations about them. The futility of the projects should have been obvious to the HEC if they had the courage to look at the facts Hoodbhoy presented. Instead of admitting its mistakes, the HEC has tried to defend these projects without regard for the academic consequences.

Articles by the HEC officials have appeared in the newspapers and in the online forums. Multiple versions of the articles are available on the HEC website. The authors of these articles have levelled all sorts of charges against Hoodbhoy but have failed to provide any satisfactory answers to the questions raised by him. They have deliberately ignored the facts mentioned in the article and have tried to create an impression that Hoodbhoy is not competent enough to criticize the projects. The objective of HEC media blitzkrieg aimed at Hoodbhoy seems to be to discourage people from criticizing the HEC projects.

Consider the Best Teachers Award initiated by the HEC. As Hoodbhoy mentioned in his article most of the teachers who got this award were chairpersons or directors of their respective departments or institutes. The list of awardees is available online. A simple google search reveals that in 2003 15 of the 22 and in 2004 20 of the 28 who got the award were in senior administrative positions.

The HEC cannot be excused on the ground that people making the recommendation were not suppose to recommend themselves. The HEC is well aware of the tendency of the people in charge to profit from their position. We should assume that HEC is aware of the culture that permeates Pakistani Universities.

Another example provided by Hoodbhoy was of too many PhD students registered with a single supervisor. The number of students registered with different faculty members of the physics department is available on the QAU website at http://www.qau.edu.pk/phylab.htm. The chairperson of the department, Aslam Baig, has 13 students registered with him. Another faculty member, Muhammad Zakaullah, has 11 and another nine students are registered with Asghari Maqsood. These three professors together have 33 PhD students. Compare this with 38 PhD students at the Centre for Theoretical Physics (MIT) with a faculty of 26. In the last 20-25 years, these three professors supervised altogether 20 PhD students. Are we to believe that since the creation of the HEC they have somehow overnight become capable of handling 33 students at once? It should be obvious to the HEC that their practice of paying the supervisor Rs. 5000 per month for an HEC funded student has something to do with supervisors overnight becoming interested in research.

An HEC funded student registered with these professors is not going to get any better supervision than other students do. The limit of eight HEC funded students for one supervisor does nothing if the total number of students per professor is not constrained. There has to be some constraint on the number of students one faculty member can have since most faculty members in Pakistani Universities are just not capable of supervising multiple PhD students.

In its multiple rejoinders to Hoodbhoy, published in various newspapers and available on the HEC website, no reasonable explanation has been provided by the HEC for funding the ’Quaranization Project’ of Saadia Chisti. The mysterious change in the title of the project the very day Hoodbhoy’s article appeared indicates that perhaps the HEC itself was uncomfortable with this project. Could it be that they had to fund it since Dr. Chisti is a member of the board of governors of the HEC?

It is also not clear what the actual amount of funding for the project is. The research grants web page mentions Rs. 5.58 Million but the August HEC newsletter (page 16) indicates an amount of Rs. 4.98 Million. This Rs. 4.98 Million are in addition to the Rs. 5.58 Million already approved or is it that so much money is lying around that Rs. 600,000 does not matter anymore?

Of the ten principal investigators mentioned in the August newsletter, Saadia Chisti is the only one with no University affiliation. The HEC did not follow its own rules limiting research grants to persons holding a full time position at an academic institution (http://www.hec.gov.pk/htmls/rsp/rgp/ResearchgrantProgram.ht m).

The HEC’s claim that project was reviewed by “top experts in the field” is rather strange since by its very nature there cannot be any credible “experts” in the field of Quaranization of science. As far as I know, no high-energy Physics lab is carrying out experiments based on verses of Quran. Perhaps the million-dollar ancient artefact HEC is proposing to buy i.e. Van de Graaf accelerator, was for this purpose. If the HEC has nothing to hide all referee reports about this project and the breakdown of the various expenses involved in the project should be made public.

In any case one does not need an advanced degree in science to realize that such attempts at Islamizing science are counter productive and have, in the past, led to deterioration of science research in the country. Perhaps it is time to read once again the article “They call it Islamic science” by Pervez Hoodbhoy (Herald, Jan 1988) to realize what happens when science and religion are mixed under state patronage.

I recall a project very similar to this presented by a PhD student from a Pakistani University at a Math conference in Lahore recently. The student wanted to derive all scientific facts and formulas from the verses of Quran and clearly indicated without any reservations, as Saadia Chisti does to a lesser extent in her project abstract, that it is an established fact that all scientific knowledge is contained in Quran. That he did not even had a basic understanding of Physics or Mathematics seemed no obstacle to him declaring after reciting a Quranic verse that, for example, instantaneous communication is possible since, after all, Allah can see different things going on at different places at the same time. Not satisfied with destroying the basis of modern physics by a single verse he went on to recite verses, which according to him explain the basic principles behind information retrieval from the internet by a computer. Who invited this student to a Math conference and why he was allowed to speak is a mystery.

A degree from Cornell, as the HEC keeps reminding us Saadia Chisti has, was no excuse for funding this project. As the above example shows, a degree from Cornell is no obstacle to absurd proposals.

Foreign faculty hiring project also needs urgent attention. This scheme has been going on for over two years now, and it is time for the HEC to carry out an academic audit to access its impact. Student evaluations of the foreign faculty should be the corner stone of any such audit. The HEC has spent Millions on this project; a few thousand spent on getting the opinion of the students would be worth it.

The HEC has not been able to provide any satisfactory explanation of the various points raised by Pervez Hoodbhoy. Instead of criticizing Hoodbhoy, the HEC should welcome debate about its projects and should apologize for acting in such a reprehensible manner.