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Muhammad Hamid ZamanThe Express Tribune |
I teach two courses during the spring semester – one is a required course for sophomores in the honours college at my university, and the other is...
In late 1930s, a large lab in northern China, under Japanese occupation, was forging ahead with a new type of weapon. It was nicknamed Unit 731. Led...
Just as there is much to celebrate on the International Women's Day in terms of inspiration and achievement, there is even more to reflect on. In...
Regardless of one's political viewpoint, we can agree that armed conflicts lead to loss of innocent lives. That person may be a concert goer in...
For better or for worse, academia is different than the corporate sector. It is meant to engage a deeper sense of analysis, to allow for issues to be...
Last week, I scheduled a meeting with a colleague who works on the disability related challenges among refugees and displaced persons. She suggested a...
In late summer of 2018, I spent a few days in Geneva. I was working at the archives of the World Health Organisation (WHO) for a book and was staying...
Her name was Sadia, she was twenty-four years' old. Her daughter, whose name was Rida Fatima, was ten months' old. The young woman, and her infant...
At the beginning of every semester, I ask my students why they signed up for my course. I did the same a week ago as our semester got underway. My...
I have done an experiment multiple times - each time with essentially the same result. It goes something like this: I go to a pharmacy somewhere near...
At a restaurant in southern Poland, last week, I met a Pakistani server. He had been in Poland for a year. This young man defied many of the...
The events in Venezuela, this past weekend, have brought a flurry of emotions and reactions. Depending upon the source of the newsfeed, one may be...
Among the common sites during the wedding season in the country, which happens to be upon us once again, near the hotels and the wedding marquees, are...
I hope that when future generations talk about the tragedy at Bondi Beach in Australia that happened last week, in the same breath, they will also...
In a world that may seem to be shaped and coloured by violence, sometimes the moral clarity and hope come not from those who are in front of the...
In the aftermath of the dirty wars in Argentina, from 1976 to 1983, a group of anthropologists came together to create an organisation called...
I still remember, when several of my science teachers, both in matric and in FSc, would skip certain chapters in the text, not because they did not...
I believe that the students who take my class, just as students who take other classes, have interesting things to share and contribute. I believe...
A wall seems to separate us from the information from Sudan. While the scenes of utter destruction and unimaginable horror, especially in El Fasher,...
In my world of research, education and some policy, the conversations about AI fall into two broad categories. The first is actually intelligent and...
Nearly two decades ago, my PhD adviser Stephen Berry started working with colleagues at LUMS to set up their school of science and engineering. Steve...
I grew up in a world where generalisations, and stereotypes, were common. People around me spoke about entire communities in broad brush strokes in a...
Several years ago, when I was working on the issue of drug resistant infections in South Asia, I spent time with poultry and cattle farmers who...
I have always been intrigued by the career trajectories of writers, artists, scientists and professors. Was it a life-long goal? A deliberate set of...
In the major cities of Europe - from Lisbon to Madrid, Paris to Athens, Frankfurt to Warsaw - I have met Pakistanis as Uber drivers, restaurant...
A lot happened in New York last week. There were bizarre speeches that made little sense except give ample fodder for jokes to last a long time,...
About a decade or so ago, I got to know a bookseller in Urdu bazar Karachi. This bookseller was introduced to me by a friend who runs a small Urdu...
The first time I heard about the idea of 'open access' (OA) publications was in 2004. I was a post-doctoral scholar and had gone to a research...
In the midst of seemingly endless conflicts and their aftershocks that continue to define displacement of millions of people, people across the world...
In 1989, well before there was as much awareness about the environmental destruction and injustice as it is today, Chilean writer and journalist Luis...
Three years ago, in 2022, Pakistan experienced some of the worst floods seen in a while. Well over a thousand precious lives were lost, countless...
Plastic bottles greeted me everywhere I went last week. In the wedding halls of Lahore and Islamabad, the hotel rooms in twin cities, the coffee shops...
By sheer coincidence, last week on August 6th, I bought Richard Flannagan's most recent book Question 7. Richard, one of Australia's most...
Seeing, they say, is believing. Evidence, supposedly, generates action. But as we see the images from Gaza, of starving people, wasting children, and...
As the applications of AI continue to touch myriad spheres of our lives, healthcare is often discussed as the one with perhaps the greatest benefit to...
A video shocks our conscience. A young woman stands in front of her executioners and stands tall. She knows how it will end, yet she does not plead...
It was sometime in late fall of 1999, a few months after I had arrived at the University of Chicago, that I first heard of Professor CM Naim – or...
Within the last decade in general, and the last couple of years in particular, there is a nascent movement within the research community - one that...
A bookseller recently suggested that I read Incorrigible Optimists Club by Jean-Michel Guenassia (translated by Euan Cameron). It is a book about...
For a long time, I had believed that most people actually care about others, particularly the loss of civilian lives; and what was often stopping them...
Later this week, on Friday June 20th, many institutions and organisations around the world that work on refugee related issues will commemorate the...
A few days ago, the CEO of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the most well-known global consulting firms, apologised to its staff. The apology...
The new restrictions on US student visas, and the uncertainty around them, are likely to cause tremendous anxiety among current and prospective...
We live in a segregated society - one where those on the bottom rung of the ladder are never allowed to question those at the top rung. This...
At universities and colleges across the US and Canada, May is the graduation season. With fanfare and pomp, graduation day brings festivities and...
Even from a distance of thousands of miles, the last week was difficult, painful and deeply unsettling. Between refreshing news and checking up on...
As the political temperature continued to rise in the last week, predictions about what may happen within a day or two or three started to make...
It was the last week of April, fifty-four years ago, when the head of UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan met with the...
April is not supposed to be this warm. The heatwaves in parts of the country are not normal. The sudden hailstorm in Islamabad a couple of weeks ago...
The discussion about the possible utility of AI in improving efficiency or increasing productivity is touching newer areas of society. Most recently,...