Pervez Hoodbhoy The Higher Education Commission (HEC) stands on death row. Appeals for reprieve have been rejected by the commission responsible for implementation of the Eighteenth Amendment. That commission’s chairman, Senator Mian Raza Rabbani, declared that “the HEC act will be revisited and reframed to shed its role as a centralised funding authority.” His logic […]
Pervez Hoodbhoy The man who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square was a Pakistani. Why is this unsurprising? Answer: because when you hold a burning match to a gasoline tank, the laws of chemistry demand combustion. As anti-American lava spews from the fiery volcanoes of Pakistans private television channels and newspapers, […]
Pervez Hoodbhoy It was mid-October 1973 when, after a gruelling 26-hour train ride from Karachi, I reached the physics department of Islamabad University (or Quaid-e-Azam University, as it is now known). As I dumped my luggage and “hold-all” in front of the chairman’s office, a tall, handsome man with twinkling eyes looked at me curiously. […]