Citizens, elections, democracy: The Bangladeshi conundrum
Even though transparent, participatory and competitive elections are a constitutional right, the realities today have vitiated those expectations.
What makes a great university?
A great university inspires and prepares students for a rich and fulfilling experience in a changing and challenging world.
The great Padma story
Shorn of its sacred grandeur the Padma has embraced its secularised and earthier image with some muscularity, audacity and flair.
Deciphering the student-learner
What makes a good student? A definitive answer to this question is difficult.
What makes a good teacher in the 21st century?
Today, the question of being a 'good teacher' generates a new vernacular.
Home and Displacement
The two words in the title are evocative, complex and slippery. What after all is “home”, and what does “displacement” really mean?
Constitutional supremacy: The dangers within
The “idea” of a constitution may be old. After all even Aristotle had written about them.
August 24, 2020
ANIS BHAI: TEACHER
Dr. Anisuzzaman’s life was a radiant gift to us, his departure an irreparable loss. The usual metaphors that have been applied (tower of strength, conscience of the nation, a reassuring lighthouse, an iconic intellectual/cultural presence , an institution by himself, a large and shady tree, the embodiment of humanist principles, and so on) may all be applicable.
June 26, 2020
Racism in America: Police Chokehold is Not the Issue
The American project was founded on rank hypocrisies. On the one hand, President Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the stirring words in the Declaration of Independence that upheld “these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”, did not free his own slaves (not even Sally Hemings, who bore him six children).
June 1, 2020
On free speech and the imperatives of democracy
It is almost axiomatic that free speech is indispensable to democracy.
April 21, 2020
Bern baby Bern: The struggle goes on
On April 8, Bernie Sanders was compelled to fold his bid for the Presidency. Consistent with his decency as a human being, his graciousness as a
February 27, 2020
In Defence of Politics
The word “politics” is much maligned and stigmatised. It suffers from a huge image problem both in the world as well as in Bangladesh.
August 30, 2019
A simple, straightforward reading of South Asian history
Dr Nurul Islam has been a towering presence in the intellectual landscape of Bangladesh. He has graduate degrees from Harvard, and held prestigious fellowships at Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Yale and the Netherland School of Economics, was Professor and Chair of Economics at Dhaka University, and the author of about 29 books of some scholarly heft and influence.
June 8, 2019
On Intimations of Ghalib: Translations from the Urdu
Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan (1797 – 1869), popularly known by his takhallus (pen name) Ghalib (conqueror), makes it difficult for writers to sum him up easily or definitively. He himself would probably have taken great and impish delight in that knowledge. In one of his ghazals he suggests (Shahid Alam
October 19, 2018
Contextualising Islam, the social and the political
The issue of Islam in Bangladesh is complex, sensitive and fraught. It has problematised the sense of national identity of Bangladeshis into a schizophrenic duality driven by the tension between the cultural and religious aspects of their collective personality.
September 8, 2018
In memory of Imtiaz Habib
It is with profound sorrow we write this piece about our dear friend Imtiaz Hasan Habib (1949-2018), who died peacefully while asleep in the early morning hours of August 27 at his home in Norfolk, Virginia.
July 2, 2018
Well done, Sir!
There are iconic pictures that sometimes capture an age, define a moment in history, exemplify beauty, tragedy, or joy, in ways otherwise impossible to evoke. Who can forget the naked, screaming Vietnamese girl fleeing the napalm attack on her village in 1972; the Chinese man standing in lonely defiance in front of a column of tanks at the Tiananmen Square in 1989; the Times Square kiss; or the raising of the US flag at Iwo Jima, heralding the end of WWII?
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