There, our granddaughter Mahnoor pointed with her eyes. I looked up. The traffic sign said: ‘Reserved for Nobel Laureate’. That was a parking space. Not just one but five spaces in a row.
So, where was this place where parking spaces were reserved for Nobel laureates, as if there were many of them driving around, in search of parking? Well, we were walking on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Our granddaughter, bubbling with excitement, was showing us around the place where she is an undergrad, a sophomore.
Like her, I was also a bit thrilled to be on the campus of a major American university. One reason for my fascination with a campus is that I had never been able to study at one. For me, such a campus is a field of dreams. A celebration of youth. An embodiment of ambition and hope.
My visit to Berkeley earlier this week was marked by many different emotions. As a journalist, I was conscious of the political battles that were fought on American campuses on the Gaza issue and how President Trump has ventured to suppress liberal opinion with an attempt to reshape the entire structure of higher education.
But first, that discovery of reserved parking for Nobel laureates. This would be a remarkable manifestation of the level of scholarship and research in an institution of higher learning. To find my answers, I checked Google. I learnt that there are 28 Nobel laureates on the current faculty of Berkeley, including two winners of this year. If you include both the faculty and the alumni, the number is an imposing 63.
Actually, it is Harvard that leads in this category. It has the most Nobel Prize winners of any university in the world, with over 160 laureates associated with the university as alumni or faculty. The second in this list is the University of Cambridge in Britain. Berkeley, then, is the third and this means that it is ahead of MIT and Oxford.
Coincidentally, I am writing these words in Long Beach, California, late in the evening of November 27. This marks the anniversary of Alfred Nobel signing his last will in 1895 to establish the Nobel Prizes.
When I think about the contributions made by the world's leading universities, it becomes difficult for me to comprehend the state of higher education in Pakistan, particularly with regard to the intellectual and academic environment on our campuses. The pity of it is that almost the entire senior faculty of our universities and so many who belong to the ruling class have all been educated in foreign, mainly in American, universities.
Again and again, the University of Karachi has remained my point of reference in this regard. What has it contributed to our society with its thousands and thousands of post-graduate students and hundreds of members of the faculty who have foreign degrees? It is the overall atmosphere at the campus that breaks my heart.
We talk so much about our youth bulge. Based on the education statistics we have, only a small percentage of young people have access to higher education, particularly in the disciplines of science and technology. Just imagine the quality of the environment on our campuses when there is not enough academic, social and personal freedom for our youth.
By the way, I had intended not to lapse into a critical mode. Hence, I have no intention of probing the present crisis of higher education in America because of how President Trump has become the focus of political and social turmoil. There are new concerns about free speech on the campus and the enrollment of international students is beginning to decline.
I just want to share some personal experience of being on a campus against the backdrop of my unrealised dreams of being on one when I was young. Initially, the University of Karachi’s campus had stirred my imagination. Then, fifty years ago, I had the good fortune of literally living on the campus of an American university, though only as a spouse when my wife Sadiqa was doing her master's in economics at Syracuse University.
After that, as a journalist who has had ample opportunities to travel, I have been, as I say, collecting campuses. Not just in America, I have visited university campuses in many other countries. Just the sight of bright young students loitering around would lift my spirits. In some ways, these campuses are a museum because they have been around for centuries and were the stage for many events of history.
For instance, I had read a lot about the students’ revolt of May 1968 before I visited the Sorbonne in Paris. The university had been occupied by the students, and when Jean-Paul Sartre came to address them, the streets were full of people. The movement was supported by France's most prominent intellectual.
When our granddaughter gave us a tour of her university campus, I felt emotionally overwhelmed. That electrifying atmosphere not only stirred my passion for a lively campus but also deepened my joy at having Mahnoor there. Her exuberance and her enthusiasm for high achievements represented for me the promise of youth in these treacherous times.
She exuded a sense of pride in being at Berkeley, also admitting that this was just a beginning. She told me about the freedom that she and other students had on campus. Walking on campus, even at four in the morning, is not a problem. There is some activity at all hours, mostly around those libraries that are open around the clock.
But with all the freedom that is there, the challenge of doing well in studies is formidable. Mahnoor, I could see, wants to do everything. In her second year at the campus, she is a member of the students’ council, which was a hard task. There is so much more she is doing. And, essentially, she is living the life of an undergrad at a major campus.
The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at: [email protected]
