July
05, 2018
Dear
Ms. Rafia,
Hello. I read
your column “Asians at Harvard” in Dawn
yesterday with much interest. Thanks
for the link to the NYT
article.
I also read all the links that it referenced, including briefly
scanning the PDFs of court documents by both Harvard
College and SFFA
(Students For Fair Admissions, Inc.). I just wanted to share with you
some points and personal experiences as just FYI --- although, I
don't know why anyone should care what I think or have experienced.
a)
The entire issue appears to be tempest in a tea cup. There are far
more important matters of empire than Affirmative Action in its
imperial colleges and the American Dreams of its have-nots.
b)
Peering inside that tempest in a tea cup, as both parent of IVY
League alumni, and as myself being an alumnus of MIT, these elite
universities of America are imperial institutions. They take the
brightest from among the various pertinent demographics throughout
the world who show the most promise of serving imperial interests the
best, and groom them.
Some
of these imperial interests are obviously achieving academic
supremacy in research and technology across the gamut of human
activity, from hard sciences to social sciences, and to humanities,
law, economics, arts, and most importantly, infusing the imperial
spirit into the younglings ambitious enough to join them for the lure
of self-actualization. Today this imperial spirit is the Pax
Americana based on universalizing American values, just as yesterday
these were the Anglo-Saxon values, and before that Muslim imperial
values. Some call this subconscious infusion of axioms and
presuppositions of empire, indoctrination.
Others
see this in finer grain resolution, of mental induction by rulers of
the prospects to be groomed, into either their own ubermensch
superiority complex that permits them to so easily rule the world
as technicians and managers of empire without the accompaniment of
guilty consciences, or groomed into the Uncle Tom mind-lock that
accepts without question, the superiority of the currency du jour of
the ruling classes and easily serves as their proxy agents over their
own nations, again without the accompaniment of guilty consciences.
These
values are subsequently promulgated down into their own communities,
societies, civilizations, and suzerainties in various forms, to make
empire acceptable, and indeed inevitable.
This
is how all empires have always worked in principle, only the
techniques have differed according to their own times. That is the
overarching agenda of America's Ivy Leagues, and all “Ivy
Leagues”. It is not altruism. It is not diversity. It is only
the exercise of primacy and hegemony. It is an endeavor that is as
old as mankind. This is always achieved with due lip-service to all
that is politically deemed to be motherhood and apple pie in the
prevailing currency. This helps sell empire's currency to the masses
and to the world. Today these political winds are blowing for
Diversity and Affirmative Action. Well, empire harvests that too.
Every
society, all societies, in all ages, and their seduction and control
systems, continually, daily, present Faustian bargains to its best
lieutenants and soldiers as the means of career advancement, social
respect, accolades. Higher one rises on the ladder of privileges, the
more insidious these Faustian bargains become. Those groomed in
empire's best “IVY Leagues” (notice the quotes which
implies that it is a template to which hundreds of its best
universities subscribe), are more prone than others. That should be
self-evident.
To
resist these Faustian pacts is often impossible. In this modernity it
is next to impossible for many, the mere sampling alone of which
ropes one in for life like no narco-opiate can.
For
the Social Darwinians among us, it is the only path to survival, and
beyond that for thriving to man's fullest potential, the
“self-actualization” trap at the expense of anyone too
stupid to thrive.
For
everyone else, irrespective of our individual belief systems, what we
take six feet under is the degree to which we resisted these Faustian
pacts.
I
have explained this imperial grooming in several articles, not as
someone for whom "grapes are sour", but as someone who has
been privileged to see the world from the other side, read their
books, studied in their institutions, and experienced the best of
personal, intellectual and emotional growth that empire offers in its
best imperial training grounds. But as I note in the short bio that
sometimes follows my two cents worth:
"The
author, an ordinary justice activist, formerly an ordinary engineer
in Silicon Valley, California (see engineering patents at
http://tinyurl.com/zahir-patents ), founded Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org in the aftermath of 9/11. He was, mercifully,
most imperfectly educated in the United States of America despite
attending its elite schools on both coasts. This might perhaps
explain how he could escape the fate of “likkha-parrha-jahils”
(educated morons) mass produced in its technetronic society with all
his neurons still intact and still firing on all cylinders. He is
inspired by plain ordinary people rising to extraordinary challenges
of their time more than by privileged and gifted people achieving
extraordinary things. He chose his byline to reflect that motivation:
The Plebeian Antidote to Hectoring Hegemons."
I
invite you to read at least two articles that address the other side
of Ivy League education, and my missive on what my dream university
would look like:
I
had written the following letter to a Harvard professor after he
decided to quit professoring to join Google to, as he stated: “I
get to hack all day”; the self-actualization trap that
underscores all the preceding verbiage:
As
does this article about an “Ivy League” Dartmouth
professor inducted into America's National Inventors Hall of Fame,
2011, for his contribution to making surveillance police state more
quickly enabled, and even openly admitting his Faustian bargain with
the unconscionable statement: “I don't really like this
application of my technology. There is nothing I can do about it, I
have now unloaded that on you, so thank you.”; again the
same ubiquitous self-actualization trap of empire that underscores
all the preceding verbiage:
That
is the actual empirical reality of all major imperial universities du
jour that I collectively call “IVY Leagues” in quote
marks. These excel in seducing those that can best serve imperial
interests, and their admission is based solely on that agenda. Their
admission criterion has neither anything to do principally with
meritocracy, nor Affirmative Action, except when it serves the
persistent needs of empire. These continually evolve with time and
happenings in society. Those nice sounding political ideas
principally serve an agenda --- the agenda to promulgate American
supremacy, American primacy, American values, globally, soon to be
openly replaced by one-world supremacy, one-world values, under the
global banner of Secular Humanism. Some argue that these are already
the underlying motivations of everything empire does, both openly as
well as by covert means.
Some
tempest in a tea cup!
Your
point about hypocrisy of Indo-Pak aspirants of Ivy-Leagues, I am not
sure is entirely valid, at least for public sector universities of
Pakistan. I studied at UET Lahore in 1970s, and admission was based
on one single metric, marks in FSC exam. At the time, medical school
admissions were also based on the same singular metric, the dreaded
“merit list”. There were just a handful on DN quota
(defence nominee), and some foreigners from Iran and Palestine and
Jordan and Sudan etc. on scholarship from their countries, as far as
I recall at UET. Where in Pakistan's public sector universities is
the Pakistani public admitted on anything besides FSc marks? Which
university, which examples? Many talented people are shut out by that
awful singular metric who cannot command the requisite “rote
learned” marks to be on the admit list. There are multiple
intelligences, multiple types of IQ, in human beings and Pakistan,
like the rest of the developing world, is woefully behind in its
recognition. We are even woefully behind understanding talent, how
can we ever cultivate it? Those who get the opportunity to develop
their natural talents is often due to the diligence of their parents,
and the handful of teachers who surely still exist in society that
still deem their profession noble.
What
I see is this stupidly being rectified in some elite Pakistani
private sector universities, like LUMS and AKU, where ability to pay
is an unfortunate requisite, but beyond that, other “holistic”
criteria such as personal interests, letters of rec, essays,
admission test, etc., may be in more significant play that attempts
to select the best candidates subjectively “objectively”,
and that opens the door for all sorts of very talented people to get
in who would otherwise never get in, including some undeserving ones
based on feudal connections. But the latter also happens at Harvard
as well, it is called “legacy” admissions; and wards of
political families groomed to rule nations, why else would Benazir
Bhutto and Murtaza Bhutto be admitted to Harvard? Why else would the
wards of third-world dictators be studying there? Same is true of our
own teenage Nobel laureate Ms. Malala, being admitted to Oxford. One
cannot seriously tell me that she is not being calculatingly groomed
by empire to be the future prime minister of Pakistan! There is
hardly even a semi-intelligent person in Pakistan who does not
understand this calculus.
I
was admitted to UET singularly on that merit list published in the
newspapers and the official board gazette. I must have been good
enough academically, competitive enough too, obviously, to be
admitted to America's top ranking university, rated number one by US
News and World Report for years on end as the number one university
in America in Electrical Engineering, far ahead of the actual IVY
Leagues, and also ahead of Caltech, ahead of Stanford, directly from
UET. I had no connections, no money, and I was offered almost full
financial aid to attend, with one time payment from my parents ---
which was also hard for them to come up without borrowing. I had just
applied out of whim, after due preparation of course. But, in fact,
why I was admitted to MIT I will never really know. I found myself
surrounded by the most brilliant people on earth far more talented
than I as soon as I arrived. They had had far more opportunities to
develop their passions and interests and thrive beyond measure far
more than I in my typical middle class home. My father struggled to
put honest bread on the table all his life. My only escapes as
teenager were the free libraries of empire, the British Consul and
American Center, and the Sunday used books market on the city
footpaths where I first found and read some of the strangest books.
It was always sink or swim, survive or perish, for our social class
at the time I was growing up into a young man. It is even worse today
not just in India-Pakistan, but in most places on earth, including
here in the United States where good college education is seen as the
meal ticket to prosperity, especially among Asian immigrant families.
Asian
immigrants in general do tend to spend more effort, more time and
money, educating our children than the average white American
families. No sacrifice is deemed too small. Because, after all, it is
only in America, not anywhere else in the world, that anyone coming
from nowhere from anywhere in the world, can potentially become the
CEO of a company. Etceteras. That prosperity is inevitably
accompanied by Faustian bargains which remain out of sight like the
rest of a submerged iceberg. It becomes the background like the air
we breathe. We seldom notice it, but our life depends on its
presence.
Being
admitted to MIT was a God send for me. I once asked MIT what they
looked for when they admitted me – as I was having a hard time
initially, as I found my preparation for surviving at MIT less than
adequate despite the fact that I was among the top few students of my
department at UET – and went for counseling to the sympathetic
foreign student advisor wondering what the hell I was doing in “hell”
(the name techies lovingly give MIT but are still loathe to leaving
it), and I was told that it was based on how I performed in the
system I grew up in, and with the opportunities or lack thereof that
I had received at home and in the society, and specifically, how I
did in relation to my local peers with those opportunities, gifts,
and handicaps, and that, if they had admitted me, I should be sure
that I belonged there, and that I should never doubt it. In fact, the
advisor quoted me the MIT handbook that an education at MIT was like
trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant: painful, most of it
falling on the ground, and that it took time to get used to being in
“hell”. It was MIT's way of grooming us, through
intellectual pain, which they evidently inflicted uniformly on
everyone, except perhaps a handful. No wonder that on Harvard bridge
on Mass Ave. that links Boston to Cambridge, about half way coming
towards MIT, it used to be etched or painted on the bridge: “half
way to hell”, or something like that. Perhaps it still is ---
but I am told that MIT has become a bit easier since my time. I doubt
that.
Later
in life when my children were applying to college, I again asked
Harvard's admission officer how they decided whom to admit among the
intensely competitive lot of uber high achievers, given that some of
those admitted in past years clearly had less than stellar scores on
their SATs and came from underprivileged families, and some who were
rejected had higher and even perfect scores and came from more
privileged backgrounds. I was told what I had already figured out for
myself: it is Output / Input, not merely Output, to be eligible for
the limited seating at the admitted list table of empire.
That
recipe, adopted by the West and lost to the Muslims, is right out of
the Holy Qur'an! What you do with what you have received, born into,
with the inherited talents and limitations, and nurturing and
grooming, or lack thereof, that is your lot in life. All that is
God's doing --- what you do with it is your doing. Output (your
efforts) / Input (God's doing, inheritance, karma, luck) is verse of
the Holy Qur'an written in Algebra!
That
algebra has become the “holistic” criteria of America's
finest imperial universities. When they say “likable”,
they are looking for people who can lead others. When they say
“courageous”, they are looking for people who have
overcome adversity and life's challenges. They are principally
looking for the promise of character and talent that can be groomed
to serve empire --- and that is difficult to quantify as a number on
a merit list.
Thus
more privileged a person who had been given more opportunities, more
guidance, more social benefits, is judged for much higher
productivity and achievement such that, overall, as an Operations
Research optimization to get the best crop, it is not uneducated to
surmise that the Output / Input may be more or less similar for
everyone admitted, or at least balanced for the goals of the
university in that admissions year, modulo of course those admitted
on legacy and other special criterion. If Asian immigrant families
and non-white minorities are putting in more effort to be part of
empire, the empire would be foolish to ignore them completely. Thus
Harvard's admission statistics for 2018 added up is 50.9% non white
races, and the rest, 49.1%, presumably whites.
That
is mind blowing, unthinkable during early twentieth century. In
today's pluralistic world, they are harvesting the best talent they
can find on the Output / Input equation across the entire racial
spectrum of America. The Anglo-Saxon race is, after all, running
empire, and their numbers are down 50 percent of their original
strength in technicians and managers from a hundred years ago. That
is of course the need of the age. Only the admission offices of these
“Ivy Leagues” would know what Output / Input is for each
applicant, which is always at best a subjective decision that they
try to make as objectively as they can, and they cannot possibly
disclose it as it is private and confidential information of the
applicant. Whereas, test scores and GPAs and other quantitative data
is less private and easily available to College Board for instance.
But
the Ivy Leagues speak to the “holistic” measurements in
general principles quite openly in their admissions blogs for
instance. I used to follow MIT's official admissions blog once upon a
time, and I learnt a great deal from it. It is incredible how much
these competitive and highly accomplished kids and their desperate
families disclose of themselves in their college applications
(ignoring the ones written by professional writers which the
admissions offices at most Ivy Leagues have learnt how to detect and
discard).
I
know for a fact what interviewers specifically look for among the
applicants who even get that far: leadership potential, stellar
communication skills, stellar interpersonal skills, ability to build
quick rapport, etc., and many of these interviewers are indeed
exceptional in what they do. One of them took my child running during
an interview because they both liked to run races! For the limited
seating at the imperial tables of America's finest “Ivy
Leagues”, many talented kids will always be left out.
Which
is why high school college counselors in the United States always
encourage college applicants to apply to many schools, usually
categorized as “dream schools”, “reach schools”,
and “sure things”. It is foolish to think one will be
admitted to Harvard or any Ivy League just because one has perfect
SATs. There is a lot more at play here to uncover future leaders,
technicians, managers, and assets of empire.
What
appears to be missing from the court documents and in the NYT
articles, is any expression of that overarching understanding of what
“holistic” really underwrites. The Affirmative Action and
quotas etc. are red herrings, and / or syntactic sugaring their un
stated goals. I am surprised that Harvard's defence also does not
cite the real purpose behind that “holisticism”, but then
again I have not read the court documents as carefully as I really
should.
The
lawsuit is mostly frivolous and I believe will be rejected modulo the
legal system. Meaning, if any laws are broken, it shall be fixed. And
if new laws are needed, these will be enacted. The philosophy will
remain unchanged --- or empire shall kill the goose that lays its
golden eggs. And why should they ever do that!
If
you want to not be in the class of “useless eaters”, you
have to appear to be useful to empire, full of promise for future
potential, but in competition with others of your peers and for the
slice of a pie that is limited.
Harvard
cannot possibly admit the 40,000 that apply to it, a vast majority of
these applicants being eminently capable of not just doing well at
Harvard, but also serving imperial interests better than the next
guy. Those left out have plenty of other opportunities in the “Ivy
Leagues” throughout empire.
If
you can't even make it into any of them, you better worry, as empire
in its distributed intelligence for discovering and grooming future
potentials, has apparently deemed you too low in the food chain, or
of the wrong race, or of the wrong religion, and perhaps they think
you will serve empire more competently in some blue color profession,
or at its fringes picking cherries, or just dead.
This
is empire! It is cruel. It is merciless. And it benefits the
naturally talented and obedient lot that buys into its axioms and
values.
How
is one selected for that winning lottery ticket is often a mystery to
those selected.
I
have always attributed that admission that changed my life to Karma,
Luck, to Good Fortune testing me, above and beyond any criterion that
MIT may have employed to vet my application. Indeed, I stopped asking
Why a long time ago and focussed on what I could do with that
education.
I
am also continually surprised that I appear to be singularly also the
only one among my far more talented and accomplished friends
throughout Pakistan and the United States, who has taken up this
burden of the pen as a categorical imperative. Most “IVY
leaguers” dare not venture this far, and have not! And I have
the benefit of the elitist exposures I received to thank for that
very lonely exercise.
That,
dear Ms. Rafia, is the success of “IVY League” education;
I am probably its distinctive failure! Harvard education is more than
branding, more than the recipe for personal success, more than just
any parents' dream; it is the factory for technicians and managers
who will willingly serve empire in every imaginable way.
Apart
from creating knowledge, and the technical systems that engage with
that knowledge and put science and human understanding in the service
of empire, those coming out of Harvard et. al. also serve their own
narrow self-interests by way of the “self-actualization”
trap in which they become so invested in over time, and become so
dependent upon the favors the system bestows upon them for keeping
the eyes wide shut, that they simply have no motivation to escape
from that golden prison which magnanimously rewards its likkha-parrha jahils.
Speak
no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil, “Summun, Bukmun, Umyun”,
has been the perennial recipe for material success in life in every
age for a reason.
And
it was for a reason that all Prophets of antiquity took a stand
against it.
It
is the success of every empire and every ruler and every system of
oppression, that they have successfully made that crafty silence out
to be the wisdom and sagaciousness du jour.
“Be Innocent of Knowledge” that jars the conscience, as
Shakespeare put it.
Harvard
epitomizes that worldly wisdom. All “Ivy Leagues” strive
to develop that imperial wisdom.
Which
is why universities like Harvard seek diversity based on their own
principal focus of imperial grooming. Caltech is exclusively
technical and science based, and therefore has resisted the
temptation to weaken its admission criterion from strictly objective
and quantitative meritocracy to accept more people of more diverse
interests and gender with the mystical “holisticism”.
They want to produce the best scientists, period. MIT succumbed to
those pressures somewhat more, as it sees itself playing a wider role
beyond generating just knowledge of science and technology. MIT sees
itself in global perspective, a player in political science which is
necessary to deploy the fruits of science in the service of empire.
And Harvard's ambit, like other imperial full spectrum liberal arts
and science schools, is obviously much broader in their un stated
charter. It encompasses grooming future leaders in every sector of
human endeavor that will serve the interests and values of empire.
Hence these universities must attract students from a more diverse
group in the global society to fulfill their global mission. Just as
Oxford and Cambridge once did, and arguably still do.
Their
admissions criteria is principally underwritten on that un stated
first principle. The admissions officers and application readers at
Harvard, as at other Ivy Leagues, are possibly kept quite unaware of
all this. They are mainly trained to implement the rubric of
admission criterion, infused as they all already are in order to even
be there, into the value system and axioms of empire. None of them
ever asks why such a criterion or why this rubric or that rubric, I
am sure. They accept it as given. Who has the time when they have to
review 40,000 applications!
All
the documents I have gleaned starting from the link in your oped,
have remarkably abstained from stating those observations, including
your own oped. Your recommendations of what to do betrays a
misunderstanding of the function of imperial colleges of America, and
empire.
Zahir
Ebrahim
First
published July 05, 2018 4213
Zahir's
Response to Rafia Zakaria's 'Asians at Harvard'
