AMERICA’S universities are the envy of the world, the epitome of academic excellence. Their groundbreaking research, independent thinking, open dialogue, innovation and prestige elevated them to dizzying heights. Although a hard crash landing is now imminent, young people everywhere still keep hoping and dreaming of admission into one.
The rise of US universities was rapid. When Nobel Prizes began in 1901, German universities grabbed the lion’s share while Oxford and Cambridge garnered just a few. America was then better known for its fun ‘cow colleges’ with their ice-cream and football jocks. Few cared about books and learning. But, after 1939, European academics fleeing Hitler’s wrath brought to the land of cowboys a mature university culture.
A decade later, Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Stanford, and other big schools were scooping up most Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals, Turing Awards, Pulitzer Prizes and other accolades. America’s economy skyrocketed as universities spun off enterprises like Google, Intel, Koch and Dell.
Just one word tells why there cannot be a Pakistani Harvard now, or in the foreseeable future.
And then came a felon, convicted under American law, currently president of the United States, who decided his country must be shot in the foot to Make America Great Again (MAGA). Behind him stand millions of Bible Belters, pot-bellied Budweiser-drinking football watchers, and assorted white American losers who blame Mexicans, Muslims, and black ‘welfare mothers’ for their long downward slide.
In 2024, J.D. Vance, now vice president, declared” “Professors are the enemy”, adding, “We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country”. MAGA’s White House crew forbade universities from discussing equity, diversity, race, affirmative action, climate change, vaccine efficacy, wildlife protection or anything considered ‘woke’. Criticism of Israel is tantamount to antisemitism, now punishable under the law. Should you see images of starving Gaza children being shot in the face by the IDF, you may not mutter “genocide”.
A vengeful throng is sadistically savouring the dismantling of the hated Eastern ‘liberal establishment’. Three-quarters (75 per cent) of US scientists are considering leaving the country, according to a March 2025 survey conducted by the prestigious science journal Nature.
Once-proud Columbia University has eaten humble pie, agreeing to pay $220 million dollars in damages to the US government plus $21m to Jewish employees who “were unlawfully targeted and harassed”. Pro-Palestinian protests are banned, the curriculum changed, and new faculty members in the Middle Eastern Studies department must be affiliated with the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. In return, the US government will release $400m in federal research funding.
Columbia’s shameful capitulation to MAGA’s extortion put Harvard next in the line of fire. Trump ordered withholding of $9 billion in government funds from Harvard and revoked its eligibility to host international students. Students panicked and Harvard responded by filing multiple challenge lawsuits. Hundreds of less well-endowed universities nervously await the court decisions knowing the axe could fall on them.
Harvard is certainly no paragon of virtue and has a chronically weak spine. Back in the 1970s, many a-times we students at MIT joined students at Harvard — a scant 15-minute walk up Massachusetts Avenue — to protest Harvard’s supportive role in the Vietnam War. Harvard also has the well-known proclivity to admit children of the rich and powerful, even the unqualified ones. The progeny of Gen Ayub Khan and Z.A. Bhutto were among such beneficiaries.
Still, to be fair, Harvard has been largely mindful of its motto, ‘Veritas’ (Latin for ‘truth’). Veritas guided, albeit imperfectly, the institution’s mission even before the United States was born. An institutional ethos, steeped in European Enlightenment ideals, enabled ground-breaking work whether in cosmology and biology or the rigorous analysis of human behaviour and society.
What makes a modern university like Harvard so very special? The answer is academic freedom, essential for exploring fundamental truths about the natural world and human society. This means professors are provided resources to research their subject, and students are encouraged to share educational spaces with classmates from diverse disciplines, ideologies, faiths, genders, nationalities and social classes. In a university’s busy marketplace of ideas uncomfortable truths may emerge, but intellectual rigour is strengthened.
For authoritarian leaders like Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Modi, academic freedom is a nuisance, a roadblock to be cleared. Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi was the closest South Asia ever got to Harvard. When I lectured there in 2005, as a Pakistani I was amazed by the degree of open discourse I was permitted. But today’s JNU is an empty husk, a grim portent of what Harvard may become.
The story of academic freedom in Pakistan is far bleaker. For the universities of British India, Veritas was never the goal. Although formally modelled after Oxford and Cambridge, they aimed at cultivating a loyal, English-speaking class familiar with the machinery of government, primarily catering to the Indian urban middle class seeking government jobs. Post 1947, India inherited 16-17 such universities whereas Punjab University in Lahore was then Pakistan’s sole university.
Punjab University’s education quality, although fairly decent by the academic standards of those times, spiralled down as Hindu professors fled to India and English professors sailed back home. In just a few years, religious extremists engulfed the university where, to this day, they remain firmly in charge, silencing every slight whisper of opposition.
Today, Pakistan has hundreds of so-called universities. But in reality these are dark dungeons that contain and stifle thought. Even personal attire is regulated. Never in my 47 years of teaching at Quaid-e-Azam University did I ever hear from a teachers’ body there — or elsewhere in Pakistan — a call for academic freedom or better standards. All they wanted then — and now — are salary increases and easier promotions.
Veritas! This one word tells why there cannot be a Pakistani Harvard now or in the foreseeable future. A security state, obsessed with maintaining absolute control over its people, seeks only propaganda machines and technical institutes. It cannot tolerate a free-thinking Harvard-like university. Most Pakistani professors are quite comfortable with the present rot; they see Veritas as a hindrance, not a help. As for the real Harvard: how much survives by the time Trump exits remains to be seen.
The writer received three undergraduate degrees and a PhD from MIT.
Published in Dawn, Aug 2nd, 2025
