Harvard's Trumpian Blues

As the “Dean of Disruption" swings at the Ivy citadel, the question isn't what Harvard was, but what it still dares to be.

- Wajahat Qazi

In a convoluted, zigzagged, sometimes nice, at times vicious but mostly serendipitous way, I have been the beneficiary of the western university system.

Admittedly, a broad term, the 'western university system' may not be an entirely accurate one. Would, for example, most European and Scandinavian universities — dead end ideological, and academically stultifying universities be co-eval with American universities? (I recall my time with a Danish university where I went against its ideological moorings and set to write my thesis on American foreign policy, with a slant for America as a potential force for good, the program co-ordinator, out of pique and ignorance called me a 'Muslim terrorist'!).

If then there is a western university system, worth its name, it is the AngloSaxon universities with American ones topping the list.

How have I been a beneficiary of the western universities I attended?

Reductively and roughly, the education in these unis has helped me cultivate and develop critical thinking skills, expansive mental vistas and horizons, ability to hold different and different ideas in my mind, appreciate these, yet hold my own, tolerance of opposing points of views and ability to see the world in a different(salubrious) light.

This, most would agree, in both normative and ideal terms should constitute the end(s) of education. The restskill(s), analytical ability, and so on are merely corollariesalbeit important ones.

But maybe the overall credit accrues mostly to me and some outstanding scholars and teachers I met and interacted with: I may have been a pupil whose orientation was 'naturally' oriented toward curiosity determined learning of a non-utilitarian learning.