Behind the Chairman’s Door

The Daily Times, one of Pakistan’s fastest growing English dailies, has run a story today giving us the bare bones of the truth of the extremist call.

With all the controversy floating around with the Lal Majid hostage situation, the Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) has invaded the Punjab University campus and told the administration to “go easy” on the cheaters because their affiliation with the extremists in their student days. Apparently the fired director and his successor had strong ties to the group while in university, while the other 4 cheaters, I mean professors, were IJT sympathisers.

Back in April 2006, four members of the the Centre for High Energy Physics at Punjab University in Lahore were charged with copying excerpts of an article by the renowned physicist Prof. Chris Llewellyn Smith and got it published by their names in a foreign science journal titled, Science in Africa, an international South African publication without giving any reference to the original author.

Dr. Atta ur Rehman, Federal Minister and Chairman of the Higher Education Commission, took serious exception to the incident and directed the Vice Chancellor of the university to take strict disciplinary action against the four teachers.

After a meeting of the Board at Punjab University, the Director, a Professor Dr. Fazl-e-Aleem, was released from his employment at the University for being careless as head and supervisor. They also deemed that the director had failed to exercise due diligence and supervision even though he was not involved in the plagiarism. They state in their press release that “the issue of plagiarism has brought bad name to the University and resolved that whoever was found involved would be taken to task.”

Taken to task… interesting….

The 4 professors were warned and censured with 2 annual increments in salary stopped. The reason…”the syndicate observed that since there young researchers had no clear cut distinction between permissible copying and plagiarism and no awareness on the issue.” They also took into account that they have published 173 articles in international journals and had no plagiarized articles from 2002 to 2007. The syndicate (board) decided that it was better not to “deprive the students of Punjab University of these talented young faculty and budding physicists of the future.”

What? They didn’t know that copying something and publishing it as your own work was illegal??!!?!?! They what the hell are they doing teaching in a university. Is education in Pakistan so weak that our students don’t know it’s wrong to pass someone else’s work off as their own? Give me a break!

This was not received well at the Higher Education Commission, who immediately blocked funding to the University until the teachers are fired. “The HEC will not provide any funding to the university until it takes required action against the plagiarists which, by simple international standards, is removal from service,” Dr Atta said. “If teachers would start doing cheating, how can they ask their students to follow principles of learning,” he added. The HEC is considering the same sanctions on the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, if they don’t start proceedings against Associate Professor and PhD research scholar Asad Shaikh regarding plagiarism of a research article originally published by Professor Zhi Wang.

But the plot sickens….

IJT “workers” have invaded the Punjab University campus and started roughing up students so that the punishment to the professors would be lenient.

So the question becomes: in the name of religion are there no laws or restrictions? You can grab land illegally, you can kidnap people, you can threaten business owners, you can cheat, you can riot, you can destroy other people’s livelihood, and NO ONE has the right to demand justice against you. But God forbid if a normal citizen were to do something that the extremists don’t agree with…

What form of Islam is this? Because its not the one that is taught in the Holy Quran.