Dr. Sabieh Anwar hardly needs any introduction in Pakistani academia, but Recompute.pk has taken a different perspective in this podcast. We went through a reflective cross section of his life, first when he was a student, then his phase as a young scholar or a faculty member joining a university in Pakistan, and finally his experience as a dean of an important STEM school at LUMS. We sincerely think that any faculty member who wants to do anything creative and meaningful in his or her teaching, no doubt, must bring that element in the classroom in front of the students, but has also to creatively deal with departmental constraints and the wider university culture and policy matters simultaneously. By moving through Sabieh Anwar’s reflective journey, we feel that students, faculty members and academic administrators will all have considerable food for their thoughts.

The person that you are, was it your university or school education that helped you shape that way or was it the way you were brought up by your parents?

You’ve given me a chance to reflect upon such vast topics, it’s a difficult task. My father is no more, but after his departure I feel more strongly about his deep impact on my life. I was in grade 3 when we came back to Lahore from England after my father’s PhD there. At first I was admitted to a famous English-medium school, it is still there and perhaps thousands of students are still studying there. But I remember that there was a ban on speaking in Urdu there, with a fine if one was caught speaking in it. But soon my father realized that I should be sent to a school where they inculcate a national spirit. I still remember these words of “milli jazba” from him even though we did not understand it back then. So he put me in Crescent Model School, where there were big grounds, morning assembly with Quranic recitation and national anthem, declamation contests in both Urdu and English, student societies and sports. The best teachers from my father’s alma mater, Central Model School, had joined Crescent after retirement, and I believe it was the best decision made by my father, as these teachers really shaped our hearts, minds and morals. And they did this all, silently, without preaching. We were taught English really well there, but equally well was the way we read Urdu, while our teachers even used references from Arabic and Farsi. There was no inferiority complex of any sort there, there was a strange self-confidence – the kind that does not border on obnoxious pride or elitism. In short, it was a beautiful schooling experience. Secondly, at home, our elders were those who just loved Pakistan, some had even participated in the Pakistan Movement, and that had a deep imprint on my being.

Also due to my father, I had a craze about Physics, to the extent that I opted to do both Matric as well as O-levels, since the traditional matriculations didn’t go into deeper conceptual spaces. Almost every year our school used to take the top Board positions, but that year even though I topped within the school, I was fourth in the Board. Everyone advised us to take the Board to the court, but once more my father made such an important intervention and made me look ahead and to move on. For my FSc I went to Government College but apart from my studies I took part in parliamentary style of debating, to the extent that I was chosen for representing Pakistan’s debating team and we even went to New Zealand to compete internationally. Again, it was my father who pushed me towards this, since my school days.

After that when I wanted to do BSc in Physics, my father pushed me to do Electrical Engineering from UET instead, since there wasn’t any good university for basic Physics, and what a wonderful decision that was. During UET days we founded Khwarizmi Science Society which aimed to bring science to the public understanding to bridge the gap between students and science experts, and even to this day this society is alive and doing a wonderful job. My father never discouraged me from these activities, but he did bring a newspaper ad for Rhodes scholarship home one day, which I eventually received and went to Oxford after my undergrad. There I studied Physics to my heart’s content. We were at the cusp of Quantum computing in 2001 there.

Compared to Pakistani universities, what was the experience of Oxford like, as a student?

It seemed like heaven to me! There was so much to do all over the university. I spent so much time in libraries there. There’s a real treasure of knowledge in each of the big libraries in England, not just at Oxford. A nostalgic feeling takes over when I see our ancestral books also preserved in their libraries. I do believe that if for some reasonUK gets destroyed today, it can all be built back to its glory from just one of those libraries. Secondly, we were spoiled for choice when it came to seminars, almost every day, so much was happening outside the classes. Even our Pakistan Discussion Forum organized two events on Iqbal and Rumi. After Oxford, I went to Berkeley for my Postdoc for 2 years, and that was a wonderful experience as well. I thank God for being so kind to me.

But why were you studying so much? You did Matric and O levels in parallel, then BSc then Phd, and then even Postdoc. Was it a given that you’re going to become an academician?

Yes, I had a romance with knowledge, with books, with Physics!

You’d have to expand on that as there’s certainly some confusions out there in the modern academia, as some good academicians are turning towards industry for higher salaries, and some are aiming for that while remaining within university, but you had some other ideals it seems, as you’ve used this term of “romance”.

Other than the grip that the knowledge had on my being, I think I was in love with the act of teaching – imparting that knowledge to my students. I think my training in debating and oratory really helped me in my classes, as otherwise Physics could be a very dry subject. I love to teach, it’s a process of catharsis for me. Even if I’m tired after the drudgery of work, by the time I’m done with my class, I feel absolutely fresh. So, I’m in romance with not just the content of Physics, but also the act of imparting that knowledge to students. Secondly, I love the connections across the fields, e.g. the connection between Biology and Physics. The romance also comes from the “bigger picture” of Science or Physics, that of Schrodinger and Heisenberg, which Freeman Dyson terms as a bird’s eye view or “Shaheen’s” view. I love how Physics is so fundamental and it lets one think and know about one’s being, one’s history. All of it with such small vocabulary yet with such a world of meaning and expression. Would this not build nostalgia and romance?

Since we’ve already transitioned into teaching, can you elaborate upon the choices you had to make after being done with Postdoc? For instance, you could have stayed in the West or could have joined a public university like your father but you chose a young small private university like LUMS.

The decision of returning back to your roots is made before going outside, not when you’re there, so that was always the case with me. By God I tried getting into UET, but due to their policies I couldn’t fit anywhere as I had partly done Electrical Engineering and partly Physics. Also, during my interview at UET the VC asked me a non-technical question, and when I started answering in Urdu, he firmly interrupted, “Gentleman, in English please!”. Around 2006-7 when LUMS hadn’t yet started School of Science and Engineering (SSE) its project director visited Berkeley during my Postdoc, and invited me to apply to SSE. I gave a faculty talk at LUMS. Later, Dr. Asad Abidi of UCLA became SSE’s first dean, he invited me there and interviewed me and then gave me an offer for LUMS. LUMS turned out to be a great choice, its biggest factor has been freedom and a lack of strict hierarchy. I’m not the most senior professor at SSE and yet I’ve been elected as a Dean, so in this respect it is like the best universities of the West.

Speaking of the best universities, there’s a race for international rankings within Pakistani universities, and those who are faring far better than LUMS as far as the checklists and ranking formulae, are not the first choice of students and parents, like the way LUMS is. What is LUMS doing right that other universities of Pakistan are missing?

I will speak on behalf of my own school of SSE. Our strength is our hiring. In Pakistan, our universities don’t have the right hiring mechanism worked out. On the one hand even if the best Pakistani PhD from MIT or Stanford wants to apply to Pakistani universities, he or she wouldn’t be able to work out a valid email address to send the CV to. On the other hand, the selection panel will have all sorts of irrelevant people like the VC of a university, high court’s judge, public service commission’s member, secretary education representative, and an arbitrary subject specialist. Which means, the right kind of judgment is not being done at the time of hiring. LUMS, on the other hand, does all it’s hard work at the time of hiring. We have around 100 faculty members at SSE now, and they are more or less all like-minded. We are passionate about teaching as well as research, and hence there’s equality amongst us.

Ranking is a qualitative affair, not a quantitative one completely, just like the relationship between a teacher and a student isn’t quantitative, just like learning isn’t a quantitative entity. And LUMS is qualitatively different from others. But I’ve seen this qualitative element at Namal, and at nascent stages of GIKI, at Habib, at QAU at one time. Faculty hiring and promotions, VC selection, these should all have qualitative elements, not just arbitrary assignment of quantitative marks per criteria. Like Nur-ud-din Zengi didn’t find Salahuddin Ayyubi through a quantitative process, you need that trusting qualitative ‘nazar’ to find what you’re looking for, at least at leadership level.

LUMS has carved out its own selection process which is different from the one proposed by HEC policies, it seems. And it is surely working for you. What lets LUMS disagree with the principles set forth by various accreditation bodies?

Even though we are a private university, we are not let off the hook completely by HEC or PEC. These accreditors have almost become a meta-university and all others a sub-campus of it. But whenever they become a hurdle in creativity, what is required by academic leadership is to rightly engage with the leadership of accreditation bodies, to present arguments to them with reason and respect. People at HEC and PEC have also studied in good universities, many from outside of Pakistan, but nobody tries really to engage with them, nobody even talks to them.

I strongly believe that it is the old ideas that are holding back our universities. The whole world has moved on and insha’Allah we will find creative openings in our landscape too. At SSE we have almost a common first year across schools and students can make up their minds along the way.

You’re very hopeful about the future, even regarding our public universities and accreditation bodies, but unlike LUMS SSE which has a very qualitatively different approach to faculty hiring of like-minded individuals as a consequence of which academic freedom makes total sense, however, there are many other private universities that have already quantitatively hired a mixed bag of faculty members based on arbitrary paper publications etc, do you think think those departments and universities have hope? Are there any ingredients that if placed correctly at such a later stage can still set them off in the right direction?

I believe small experiments like Namal or Austrian University at Haripur need to succeed. The VC or Rector needs to be a satiated person who has no ambitions for himself, and instead is kind, giving and capable as a leader. Then the core faculty hiring needs to be done very meticulously, as that is going to be the catalyst. Intentions are especially important in the beginning. There’s a need for ‘jawaano ko peeron ka ustaad kar’ so new people with new thoughts and new spirits need to be cherished without any political interference. At LUMS another great aspect is that there’s zero political intervention when it comes to student induction or faculty hiring and promotion etc. Even the President of Pakistan or PM or corps commander cannot do anything. These ingredients along with merit, transparency allow a place like LUMS to not be influenced by anybody else.

There are many universities in Pakistan much bigger than LUMS, where there’s wonderful faculty working, all they need is an exemplary leadership that is more interested in their faculty’s career development than their own. This kind of leadership cannot be produced through an MBA program. It can be produced through reading Iqbal, through reading Quran, through reading history, it can be inspired through a hero portrayed in a novel, it can be catalyzed by an event. The kind of leadership that can create Pakistan, that can construct our nuclear program, why can’t we have such leadership in universities? Within universities leaders need to be selected on merit, so they can become exemplary for everyone. We are naturally emotional and missionary, with exemplary leadership most of the faculty members will follow their leaders to wonderful spaces. The processes for head hunting VCs, deans and heads of departments need to change.

You had already found a pretty sound LUMS when you joined it, but coming to your phase of deanship now, is there any gap that you at the leadership of SSE want to fill still?

The gap that I’m trying to bridge is our connection with Pakistan. Firstly, our message needs to reach out to others, but not as an elite looking down upon the rest, but just as a humble dissemination of whatever good idea we’re practicing. For this important mission, I’ve created a science communication cell, started off a website and videos. Language is important, I’ve asked all my MS and PhD theses to have an Urdu title as well as summary. I’ve also started communicating with policy makers in the same spirit. Secondly, I’m inspired by the need to integrate interdisciplinary areas such as brain or neuroscience and engineering. I want to create a center for clinical innovation that disrupts the silos of pre-medical and pre-engineering in Pakistan, where engineers and scientists can work and research in tandem with clinicians. If this barrier can’t be broken at LUMS or a private university, it’s very hard to imagine it happening anywhere else. I want to create deeper academic links of SSE with fringe areas such as archeology, astronomy, geology. We already have two computer scientists who have been hired in our Biology department.

There needs to be a buy-in from all your faculty members so that this wonderful vision of their dean could be achieved. Is it because of a democratic process through which you were elected as a dean that makes this possible?

Even if one comes through as a result of a democratic process, he could still act dictatorially. As a dean I have to continuously be in a democratic dialogue with all my faculty in order that this vision becomes a reality. I have made two principles for myself as a dean: 1) I have to positively keep on surprising my faculty, by making their life easier without their asking for it, by enabling their research ideals, instead of bureaucratizing it. 2) I want to prioritize ideas that have a long-term impact. I want to give space to relevant as well as unusual research directions that don’t find home anywhere else. Lastly, I wish to see our faculty as well as students learning about learning.