This blog post presents a brief review of the book “Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim Civilization from the Past” written by Firas Alkhateeb, an American scholar, writer and historian. The book digs deeper into the often-overlooked contributions of Muslims throughout history, offering readers a comprehensive understanding of the diverse achievements and enduring legacy of Islamic culture.

In this blog post, some of the major challenges confronted by the institutes of higher education in Pakistan are discussed in detail. The aim is to provide the policymakers and educational leadership with a deeper insight into the problematic areas in the higher education sector in the country for reforms and improvement. These challenges are outlined here: 1. Management of human resources 2. Role ambiguity 3. Performance appraisal 4. Interpersonal communication 5. Mushroom growth of the universities 6. Legal and judicial activism 7. Lack of accountability 8. Lack of autonomy 9. Financial crunch 10. Lack of automation/digitalization

This blog post is intended to share my personal insight about the state of affairs of conflict of interest prevailing in the public sector universities in Pakistan with policy makers, academics, concerned officials and university’s management with focus on the following areas: 1. What is a conflict of interest? 2. Situations involving conflict of interest 3. Aim of the conflict of interest policy 4. State of affairs in the universities in Pakistan 5. Dearth of policy guidelines on conflict of interest 6. Illustrative examples of conflict of interest 7. Managing conflict of interest 8. Disciplinary consequences

This blog post highlights some of its sinister implications of the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Higher Education Department’s decision to impose a ban on all kinds of appointments, recruitment and selection in the public sector universities in the province for information of people at the helm of affairs to give this verdict a thoughtful reconsideration.

This blog post is aimed at providing necessary insight to the academic leaders, government functionaries and policymakers to extend its reform agenda to the higher education sector in Pakistan.

This blog post makes an effort to unearth multiple layers of bureaucratic complexities that impede growth of emerging universities and frustrates academic leadership. Analyses of its root causes and solution deserve to be looked into methodically and intuitively.

I had a chance to read the Ishrat Husain bestseller, “Governing the Ungovernable”. The book makes an attempt to look into the underlying reasons behind Pakistan’s economic turmoil, volatile social development and inequitable growth rate and argues that the major cause for the hubbub is institutional failure to govern. This blog will help the readers to have a quick overview of what is in the book and I hope they will find it of immense interest.