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Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The Express Tribune

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The environment of evil

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...

23.07.2025 40

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Remembering CM Naim

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...

16.07.2025 30

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Hosting research

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...

09.07.2025 20

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

What can they read?

A bookseller recently suggested that I read Incorrigible Optimists Club by Jean-Michel Guenassia (translated by Euan Cameron). It is a book about...

02.07.2025 70

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Who do we grieve for?

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...

24.06.2025 30

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Privilege, justice and kindness

Later this week, on Friday June 20th, many institutions and organisations around the world that work on refugee related issues will commemorate the...

18.06.2025 20

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Advice and accountability

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...

11.06.2025 40

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Reimagining institutions

The new restrictions on US student visas, and the uncertainty around them, are likely to cause tremendous anxiety among current and prospective...

04.06.2025 20

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The two ladders

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...

28.05.2025 20

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The burden of generations

At universities and colleges across the US and Canada, May is the graduation season. With fanfare and pomp, graduation day brings festivities and...

21.05.2025 20

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Someone's home

Even from a distance of thousands of miles, the last week was difficult, painful and deeply unsettling. Between refreshing news and checking up on...

14.05.2025 20

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

We know better

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...

07.05.2025 10

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Our history, our humanity

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...

30.04.2025 30

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Climate, community and compassion

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...

23.04.2025 60

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The specific and the vague

The discussion about the possible utility of AI in improving efficiency or increasing productivity is touching newer areas of society. Most recently,...

17.04.2025 100

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Consumables and collaborations

I have had the privilege of working with remarkable scientists and engineers at multiple universities in Pakistan. They are driven by the same...

16.12.2024 7

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The momentary concern

Eight years ago, in December 2016, I accompanied a team to a small camp at the Lebanese-Syrian border. It was cold and there was snow on the...

09.12.2024 3

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The analysts industry

Imagine a system with many parts. Assume that these parts can operate both independently and interact with each other. At any given time, these...

03.12.2024 3

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Negligence, apathy, stigma and repeat

We do not have all the facts about the recent HIV outbreak at Nishtar Hospital in Multan. But we do know quite a few things already. For example,...

26.11.2024 3

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Developing 'necessary' skills

The debate about how higher education should be viewed for large sectors of society is not new. There are longstanding discussions about who should...

19.11.2024 10

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Social suffocation

I honestly did not know that it was possible to hit 1000, or 2000, on AQI. I mean I knew that those numbers were possible, but I did not expect...

12.11.2024 3

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The view from outside

Egypt reminds me of Pakistan. It is not simply the busy streets of Cairo, the directionless traffic that produces toxic smog and the chaos of an...

05.11.2024 1

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Science and simple solutions

Growing up, I knew that we could trust the contents inside the white rectangular sachet. ORS - or oral rehydration solution - came in those tiny...

29.10.2024 4

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Solving the wrong problem

We probably do not associate the words "breaking news" with the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training. But we live in a strange...

22.10.2024 3

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Finding home

Professor Wendy Pearlman's latest book, The Home I Worked to Make, asks a simple question - what is home? Pearlman, who is a distinguished scholar...

15.10.2024 3

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The full humanity of everyone

When we talk about science (and engineering) in the classroom, in seminars or in research studies, we take one of two positions. We either talk...

08.10.2024 2

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The permanent cloak of invisibility

Lebanon has a very special place in my heart. Even with my rudimentary Arabic, I feel at home there. Beirut and its people have shaped my life and...

01.10.2024 2

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Future of higher education

Like many of my colleagues, I routinely get requests from prospective graduate students who are interested in applying to our programme. There is a...

24.09.2024 2

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Caring with tangible actions

While the destruction of hospitals or clinics during conflict makes headlines, as it should, the destruction of colleges or universities does not...

17.09.2024 2

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Erasing identities

A recent debate, led by an elected member in the Sindh assembly, called for expulsion of all illegal aliens from the province. This particular...

10.09.2024 3

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Health, healing and humanities

Several years ago, in Beirut, I first got to fully appreciate the value of medical humanities. It was a small workshop at the American University...

03.09.2024 1

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The enduring legacy of conflicts

Long after the guns have gone silent, the lasting legacy of the evil of war continues to inflict harm on generations of people, including those who...

27.08.2024 1

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Going off-script

Last week, I had the opportunity to work alongside nearly two dozen educators, to think about how to discuss issues of forced displacement (i.e....

20.08.2024 2

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Community as a safety net

The excitement around Arshad Nadeem's success is a testament to how eager we all were for some good news. The euphoria about the Olympic record and...

13.08.2024 1

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

Far corner of the census table

In his long poem, Baghdad Ki Aik Raat (a night in Baghdad), written 75 years ago this year, the great Urdu poet Ibn-e-Insha shares his anguish as...

06.08.2024 2

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman

The ‘what if’ questions

During my PhD, I worked on computer simulations of biological systems and processes. The idea was to simulate how a system would develop, evolve or...

23.07.2024 2

The Express Tribune

Muhammad Hamid Zaman