The universities of the United States are the envy of the world, the epitome of academic excellence. Their innovative research, independent thinking, open dialogue, innovation and prestige raised them to vertiginous heights.
Although a hard landing is imminent, young people from everywhere continue to wait and dream of admission to one.
The rise of American universities was fast. When the Nobel Awards began in 1901, German universities grabbed the part of the lion, while Oxford and Cambridge obtained only a few. The United States was better known for its fun ‘cow universities’ with its ice cream shops and soccer athletes. Few worried about books and learning. But, after 1939, European academics flee from Hitler’s anger brought a mature university culture to the land of jeans.
A decade later, Harvard, Mit, Columbia, Stanford and other large schools were collecting most of the Nobel Prizes, Campos Medals, Turing Awards, Pulitzer Awards and other praise. The United States economy shot when universities came out to companies such as Google, Intel, Koch and Dell.
Only one word says why there cannot be a Pakistani Harvard now, or in the predictable future.
And then a criminal came, convicted under American law, currently president of the United States, who decided that his country should be shot in the foot to make the United States again (magician). Behind him are millions of biblical Belters, soccer observers who drink Budweiser with marijuana belly and a variety of white white losers who blame Mexicans, Muslims and ‘black welfare mothers’ for their long slide.
In 2024, JD Vance, now vice president, declared “” The professors are the enemy, “added:” We have to honestly and aggressively attack universities in this country. “
The crew of the White House of Maga prohibited universities from discussing equity, diversity, race, affirmative action, climate change, vaccine effectiveness, wildlife protection or anything considered ‘awakened’. Israel’s criticism is equivalent to anti -Semitism, now punishable by law. If you see images of the hungry children from Gaza to the IDF, you cannot murmur the “genocide.”
A vindictive crowd is savoring the dismantling of the hateful ‘liberal establishment’ oriental. Three quarters (75 percent) of American scientists are considering leaving the country, according to a March 2025 survey conducted by the prestigious scientific journal Nature.
Once the University of Columbia was prolonged, he has eaten a humble cake, agreeing to pay $ 220 million in damage to the United States government plus $ 21 million to Jewish employees who “were illegally attacked and harassed.” Pro-Palestinian protests are prohibited, the curriculum changed and the new members of the Faculty in the Department of Studies of the Middle East must be affiliated with the Institute of Studies of Israel and Jews. In return, the United States government will release $ 400 million in federal research funds.
The shameful capitulation of Columbia to the extortion of Maga put Harvard below on the line of fire. Trump ordered the retention of $ 9 billion in Harvard government funds and revoked his eligibility to organize international students. The students panicked and Harvard responded by presenting multiple demands for challenges. Hundreds of less well endowed universities wait nervously to court decisions knowing that the ax could fall on them.
Harvard is certainly not a virtue paragon and has a chronically weak backbone. In the 1970s, many A-Times del Mit students joined Harvard students, a scarce 15-minute walk along Massachusetts Avenue, to protest Harvard’s support role in the Vietnam War. Harvard also has the well -known propensity to admit children from the rich and powerful, even those not qualified. The progeny of Gen Ayub Khan and Za Bhutto were among such beneficiaries.
Even so, to be fair, Harvard has been largely aware of his motto ‘,’Veritas‘(Latin for’ truth ‘). Veritas Guided, although imperfectly, the mission of the institution even before the United States was born. An institutional spirit, immersed in the European ideals of the Enlightenment, allowed an innovative work, either in cosmology and biology or the rigorous analysis of human behavior and society.
What makes a modern university like Harvard so special?
The answer is academic freedom, essential to explore fundamental truths about the natural world and human society. This means that teachers receive resources to investigate their subject, and students are encouraged to share educational spaces with classmates of various disciplines, ideologies, religions, genres, nationalities and social classes. In the busy market of ideas of a university, uncomfortable truths may arise, but intellectual rigor is strengthened.
For authoritarian leaders such as Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping and Modi, academic freedom is a discomfort, an obstacle to be authorized. Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi was closest to southern Asia that has arrived in Harvard. When Due Conferences there in 2005, as Pakistani surprised the degree of open speech, they allowed me. But today’s Jnu is an empty peel, a gloomy bearing of what Harvard can become.
The history of academic freedom in Pakistan is much more gloomy. For the universities of British India, Veritas was never the goal. Although formally modeled after Oxford and Cambridge, they aimed to cultivate an English -speaking loyal class familiar with government machinery, which mainly serves the Indian urban middle class that seeks government work. After 1947, India inherited such universities 16-17, while the University of Punjab in Lahore was then the only University of Pakistan.
The educational quality of the University of Punjab, although quite decent for the academic standards of those times, was aspirated when Hindu professors fled to India and the English teachers went back home. In just a few years, religious extremists wrapped the university where, to this day, they remain firmly in charge, silencing every slight opposition whisper.
Today, Pakistan has hundreds of so -called universities. But in reality, these are dark dungeons that contain and suffocate thought. Even personal clothing is regulated. Never in my 47 years of teaching at the Quaid-E-Azam University I ever heard from the body of a teacher there, or in other parts of Pakistan, a call to academic freedom or better standards. Everything they wanted then, and now, are salary increases and easier promotions.
Veritas! This word says why there cannot be a Pakistani Harvard now or in the predictable future. A security state, obsessed with maintaining absolute control over its people, only looks for propaganda machines and technical institutes. You cannot tolerate a free -thought Harvard University.
Most Pakistani teachers feel quite comfortable with current rot; Come Veritas as an obstacle, not as help. As for the true Harvard: how much survives when Trump comes out to see.
The writer received three university degrees and a MIT doctorate.
Posted in Dawn, August 2, 2025
