Source: LUBP

Note: The context of the following letter is discussed in this post: Jamia Salafia Deobandia LUMS fires Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy

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From: Pervez Hoodbhoy
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2012 1:44 PM
To: Adil Najam
Cc: syedbabarali@yahoo.com; sahil; jaffe; Sohail Qureshi; Amer Iqbal; Muhammad Sabieh Anwar;
Anjum Altaf; Shahab Baqai
Subject: My exit from LUMS: For the record

15 October 2012

Dear Adil,

You suggested in your email (appended below) that we meet for one last time, but I see little point. We have already had numerous meetings in your office since November 2011 to discuss the extension of my teaching contract, which expires at the end of the current semester. You know that the SSE dean informed me on 11 October that my contract would not be renewed. This was a decision for LUMS to make, and I assume you are party to it. It will serve no purpose for me to hear yet more explanations for why I am unfit to continue teaching at LUMS.

I have been left bewildered by the decision-making process under your watch, and the fact that during the meetings over the past year I was presented with an ever shifting set of reasons for why my contract would likely not be renewed.

I am using this email as an opportunity to establish a record of this process for myself. It is being copied to all who have been involved and concerned in the matter. If there are omissions or errors in what follows, I expect you and the SSE dean, as well as the others, to send corrections by email to everyone on this list. Failing this, I will assume that you agree to the accuracy of this record of events.

In my 11 October meeting with the SSE dean, the following reasons were offered for why my contract would not be extended:

a) That you (PH) have “too much on your plate” and your primary mission “seems to be to fix the world”;
b) That I have not helped in recruiting new faculty;
c) That I have not helped the physics chairman in his duties;
d) That I have not mentored the younger faculty.

I am astonished by the first of these reasons. I do not see what bearing it has on the quality of my teaching or my research at LUMS – which is the basis for my employment here. If I want to fix my country or the world in my time that is my business.

As for the other reasons, I find them ironic. My association with SSE began many years before I had been offered employment here. Syed Babar Ali asked me repeatedly for nearly a decade to have a close relationship with SSE, which I welcomed.

As for my contribution to LUMS in this time, I believe I was of some help. In 2006, and then again in 2010, Syed Babar Ali asked me to consider the position of dean of SSE. Perhaps as a consequence of my efforts, some of my former students and colleagues applied to SSE. A few ended up teaching here and are present today as well (with the exception of my close friend, Faheem Hussain, who sadly passed away in 2009).

For your information, I have sat through the technical presentations of almost all applicants to the physics department and offered my comments when solicited by the chairman. Beyond that I could do little else – being on a short-term contract myself, I could scarcely ask others to apply for full career positions at LUMS.

I find the third and fourth reasons curious – especially since no specific instances of either failing were offered to me. I do not know of any situation where the physics chairman asked for my cooperation and I refused. I leave it to the current physics chairman, Sabieh Anwar, who is copied on this message, to provide appropriate examples.
Similarly, I frequently meet with the younger faculty, some of whom are my former students, and we discuss physics to mutual benefit. None have complained to me. I leave it to the SSE dean to provide instances of such complaints to me and the others copied on this message.

As I noted above, this most recent meeting with the SSE dean introduced a new set of reasons for why I would no longer be welcome to teach at LUMS. I turn now to the previous sets of reasons.

Months before I joined LUMS in January 2011, Amer Iqbal, then chairman of the physics department, invited me to teach in the department. He informed me that I was eligible for a 3-year contract. But in November that year, shortly after you became vice-chancellor, you told me that a new LUMS policy left only the possibility of one-year contracts that could be renewed on a year-to-year basis. You indicated further that there would be absolutely no difficulty in renewing my contract.

But no one-year contract turned up. By this time, I was teaching only with the promise of a contract but without an actual signed contract. So we had more meetings in your office where you told me that some of your sources had informed you that I was “not teaching enough”, and I was “not physically present on campus often enough”.

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