Strategy of Clean Break - Abolish HEC and Rethink Higher and Lower Education

To: Dr. Tariq Banuri, Chairman, Higher Education Commission, Islamabad, Pakistan (HEC Federal Government)
Cc: Academics of Pakistan, Chief Justice of Pakistan, Army Chief of Pakistan, Prime Minister of Pakistan
Subject: Strategy of Clean Break - Abolish HEC and Rethink Higher and Lower Education
Date: December 02, 2018
Dear Tariq,
I hope you don't mind my dispensing with the formality of addressing you with your titles and accolades, of which I am sure there must be many, and those around you must drown you with the proper feudal etiquette daily. As the new man at the helm of academic affairs in Pakistan, before you make the nation suffer your own good intentions, as one of the nation, I must be straightforwardly blunt, with no disrespect intended.
You have accepted to lead an inept and corrupt institution that has mostly wrecked havoc upon Pakistan's higher education. I believe you recognize this fact. I say this because of the news report which stated: “It is notified for the information of all concerned that any correspondence from any HEC official to any past chairperson of the HEC including Dr Attaur Rehman, Dr Javed Leghari and Dr Mukhtar Ahmed has to be personally approved by the chairman. No exception,” (Daily Times, July 30, 2018) And therefore, you are someone, one may easily surmise, who has jumped into the frying pan to save its contents that were set on fire by your predecessors from whose legacy you wish to make a clean break.
I applaud that noble sentiment of Herculean firefighters. However, as all firefighters must know, sometimes a half-baked termite-ridden structure has to be burnt to the ground in order to protect the dwellers, surroundings, and rebuild what is sensible, pertinent and useful to those who own it. In our case, the public, who are owners of the state and its institutions. Without our tacit acceptance for rulers to govern, there is no governance, only rule of might is right. Even an economist must understand this abjad of civilization that isn't measured in monetary terms.
One must also understand the system, and system properties such as interconnection between components which lend it important overall behavior characteristics. Without understanding the complete system and why it continues to fail, the system can never be reengineered to not fail again by focussing on individual components even with an infinite supply of good intentions.
FWIW, here is my 358 page report that shows why the system fails and will continue to fail no matter how many distinguished Hercules are imported from the West to clean the Augean stables:
I reproduce some passages that pertain to your role as the new supremo of HEC:
Begin Excerpt
I wonder if this superhero's tenure is also going to turn into another Alice in Wonderland show as everything else in HEC and Pakistan are --- Wrapped in Absurdities!
Not if the new head of HEC reads this report with patience, and at least the due diligence with which it has been written, acquires ma'arifat into the systemic problem of higher education in Pakistan, that it is not individuals, but the system that needs fixing. High quality papers don't just happen by magic. High quality papers require high quality research, and high quality projects to conduct such research in, and high quality professional interest with high quality love of learning to conduct such research, and high quality leadership under whose direction and mentorship research is led, and high quality in work ethics and personal integrity to not take short-cuts for pecuniary gain and accolades, and high quality in system egalitarianism rather than system cronyism that make seeking careers in academe both satisfying and rewarding rather than bastion of mediocrity to hide under.
Can the imported Pakistani superhero from the United States fix all that without the gestalt shift outlined in this report? Do we need Western imported Herculean superheroes to clean the Augean stables, or one fearless and competent local intellectual at the top who does not care for his own self-interest but for his nation? Just one such Pakistani is sufficient. Does that person exist in Pakistan? Otherwise, a hundred thousand successful and prized academics imported from the Untied States and the West are useless! HEC already experienced the tyranny of good intentions of Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman that has made a wreck of Pakistan's higher education! When house niggers preside over the destiny of a nation, they will always have imported saviors and other house niggers come rescue the field niggers. The end result is that nothing will ever change except for window dressing at best. To understand mental colonization and this non politically correct taxonomy which is well established, but infrequently employed to study the long-festering problems Pakistan faces, see [19], [19a], [19b], [19c], [19d].
The basic issue once again comes back to loss of ethics and integrity among Pakistanis. We are taught from birth, it seems, to be opportunists. We use others to get ahead. We are honest only until we are caught (or when it pays being honest)! And surely, the best scam is to appear to be a noble opportunist in the National Interest. U-turns are now legit. I think I am back in Alice in Wonderland! At least, Alice can always wakeup from her silly nightmare.
Pakistan, Pakistan, Pakistan! Integrity challenged across the board.
And yet, for all Pakistanis, it is still dil dil Pakistan, jaan jaan Pakistan.
However, despite that noble song which still sings on its own in many a broken Pakistani heart, until that pernicious disease is recognized as the fundamental first-cause of Pakistan's cancerous problems across the board, in every sphere of our existence, nothing is ever gonna get fixed in Pakistan regardless how many superheroes are imported from the West, and how many U-turns our illustrious leader and his circus clowns teach the public to make. Should be obvious. It is self evident.
If Dr. Arshad Ali has no real case of plagiarism against him other than his student Atif Mehmood's; if HEC's new superhero, Dr. Tariq Banuri, wants his own dream team in place and wishes to get rid of legacy to start afresh, surely there is more ethical way to terminate the contractual services of Dr. Arshad Ali. Otherwise, I see little difference in opportunism, except for scale: one is of the pirate, and the other is of the emperor. It may be pertinent to end this study of Dr. Arshad Ali's strange case with the foundational thought that anchors the latter day Western civilization to its Hellenistic and Roman imperial roots. It is even ubiquitously on display in Pakistan as the epitome of ethical values that are actually cherished in Pakistani society, as opposed to those that we so religiously pay lip-service to:
“When the King asked him what he meant by infesting the sea, the pirate defiantly replied: 'the same as you do when you infest the whole world; but because I do it with a little ship I am called a robber, and because you do it with a great fleet, you are an emperor.'” --- The City of God against the Pagans, Page 148
End Excerpt
Kind Regards
Zahir Ebrahim
California


Strategy of Clean Break - Abolish HEC and Rethink Higher and Lower Education Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org