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Atif Rehman Mian (Urdu: عاطف رحمان میاں; born 28 June 1975) is a Pakistani-American economist who serves as the John H. Laporte Jr. Class of 1967 Professor of Economics, Public Policy, and Finance[1] at Princeton University, and as the director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.[2] He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021, and was elected Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2021.[3]
| Atif Mian | |
|---|---|
| Born | Atif Rehman Mian June 28, 1975 (age 50) Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Economist |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BA, MA, PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | Daron Acemoglu |
His work focuses on the connections between finance and the macro economy.[4] He is the first person of Pakistani origin to rank among the top 25 young economists of the world.[5] In 2014, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified Atif as one of twenty-five young economists who it expects will shape the world’s thinking about the global economy in the future.[5]
Contents
Early life and education
Mian was born in Pakistan to parents who were government physicians.[6] He grew up and received most of his early education in Pakistan.[6] Later, he pursued engineering and received a scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the age of 17. During his undergraduate studies, he shifted his focus to mathematics and computer science before studying economics.[6] He completed his undergraduate degree in 1996 and later briefly attended Princeton University. He returned to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to earn his PhD in 2001, with a dissertation on banking and governance.[6]
Career
Mian was a professor at the at the University of Chicago from 2001 to 2009 before moving to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught until 2012. In 2012, he joined the faculty at Princeton.[4]
In September 2018, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan appointed Mian, an Ahmadi Muslim, to serve on the Economic Advisory Council to provide assistance on issues of economics and finance.[7] His appointment was criticized by groups opposed to government representation for religious minorities, and Mian was asked to resign a week after his appointment.[8][9][10] As a result, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Imran Rasul resigned from the council in protest.[11][12][13] Mian’s removal from the EAC received worldwide condemnation, including an open letter by leading economists including many Nobel laureates.[14][15] International media outlets such as The Economist and Financial Times also criticised the move.[16][17]
Writing
Atif is the author of the critically acclaimed book House of Debt (with Amir Sufi, University of Chicago Press, 2014).[18][19][20] The book argues that debt caused the Great Recession—rather than failing banks, as the Bush and Obama administrations had diagnosed. His book was shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year, and it won the Gordon J. Laing Prize of the University of Chicago Press.[4]
Personal life
Around 1999, Atif Mian married his wife Ayesha, who he knew since childhood. They have three children, two daughters and a son.[6][21]
Recognition
In 2021 Mian was named a Fellow of the Econometric Society.[22] He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021.[23] In 2014, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified Atif as one of twenty-five young economists who it expects will shape the world’s thinking about the global economy in the future.[5]
References
- “Home | Atif Mian”. Scholar.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-03.
- “People | The Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance”. Jrc.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-03.
- “Congratulations to our 2021 Fellows | The Econometric Society”. http://www.econometricsociety.org. Retrieved 2022-05-08.
- Curriculum vitae (PDF), Princeton University, retrieved 2017-05-21
- IMF Lists 25 Brightest Young Economists, 27 August 2014
- “Man With A Mission: Princeton Economist Atif Mian – IMF F&D”. IMF. Retrieved 2022-05-08.
- PM Khan forms 18-member Economic Advisory Council, September 1, 2018
- “Atif R. Mian’s appointment: Moment of truth for Imran Khan”. The News. 5 September 2018.
- “‘We will not bow to extremists’: Govt hits back after vicious campaign targets Atif Mian”. Dawn. 4 September 2018.
- Chaudhry, Dawn.com (7 September 2018). “Under pressure govt backtracks on Atif Mian’s appointment; removes economist from advisory council”. DAWN.COM. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
- “EAC loses one more Ivy League professor after Atif Mian”. The News. 7 September 2018. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
- “Asim Ijaz Khawaja, leading international economist quits Pakistan EAC as protest”. Times of Islamabad. 7 September 2018. Retrieved 8 September 2018.
- “Imran Rasul resigns from EAC in solidarity with Atif Mian”. The Express Tribune. 8 September 2018.
- “Top 90 economists, 8 Nobel laureates support Atif Mian over EAC’s removal”. http://www.thenews.com.pk. Retrieved 2022-05-08.
- “Announcements | Timur Kuran”. Retrieved 2022-05-08.
- Stacey, Kiran; Bokhari, Farhan (2018-09-10). “Imran Khan criticised for axing Ahmadi adviser”. Financial Times. Retrieved 2022-05-08.
- “Pakistan’s new government betrays the Ahmadi minority”. The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2022-05-08.
- “House of Debt | Atif Mian”. Scholar.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-03.
- Akst, Daniel (May 28, 2014), “Book Review: ‘House of Debt’ by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi”, The Wall Street Journal
- Summers, Lawrence (June 6, 2014), “Lawrence Summers on ‘House of Debt'”, Financial Times
- “Man With A Mission: Princeton Economist Atif Mian – IMF F&D”. IMF. Retrieved 2025-06-19.
- Congratulations to our 2021 Fellows, The Econometric Society, September 22, 2021, retrieved 2021-10-29
- “Atif Mian”. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2022-05-08.
External links
- Home page
- Atif Mian publications indexed by Google Scholar
Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at South Africa ·
“At a time when religion has been distorted to create mayhem in many parts of the world, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community provides a true picture of what Islam is supposed to be.”
Prof Atif Mian conversion to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Juma’at….. a faith inspiring story : in his own words.
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“ The greatest gift of Ahmadiyya teachings is that they introduce you to the true concept and reality of God.” (Prof Atif Mian, Chicago, Illinois USA)
I was born in Nigeria in 1974 but grew up mostly in Pakistan. Looking back at my life, I have to admit that I have been extremely fortunate in many ways. I had the most loving and caring parents who sacrificed a lot for the education and proper upbringing of their children.
I was the youngest in my family, with three older sisters. So you can say I was spoiled once by my mother and three times by my sisters. I would describe our household as moderately religious. My mother constantly taught me the value of good morals.
I remember having a sense from a fairly young age that I was expected to do the “right thing,” i.e. tell the truth, respect elders, not be extravagant, and so on. My parents paid great attention towards their children’s education. They commuted long distances for six years just so we could go to school in Lahore where education standards were higher. When I was finishing my high school, my father encouraged me to apply to the U.S. for college. Luckily I got admitted to MIT and joined there in the fall of 1993 as a freshman.
Life at MIT was quite difficult in the beginning. Classes were tough, language was a bit foreign, and culture was very different. There were adjustments to be made at many levels. It was perhaps the result of exposure to alternative ways of life, or perhaps the natural consequence of a maturing mind that I began to ponder seriously about the pre-suppositions of life that a child grows up with. I had been raised as a Muslim with a strong emphasis on the belief in God. I had never questioned what I had been taught thus far, but this now turned out to be an uneasy compromise.
Should I believe in Islam simply because fate had me born into a Muslim family? Why should one take religion seriously when its primary determinant seems to be the flip of a coin that decides which family one is born into? Why should one put so many constraints on life because of a God that may or may not exist? The questions were many, but I struggled with finding acceptable answers. At the same time the conventional understanding of Islam seemed more and more intolerant and irrational to me.
Muslims who advocated on behalf of Islam enthusiastically split hairs when it came to religious dogma, and yet seemed oblivious to the basic tenets of justice, tolerance and human civility. For example, otherwise sane looking people would actively support the idea that anyone who chooses to leave Islam should be condemned to death.
I was beginning to be put off by religion. It was around these early years in college when I found out that an old friend of mine from high school, Hamid Sheikh, was an Ahmadi Muslim. I had known him for over eight years but never knew that he was an Ahmadi Muslim. My impression of Ahmadi Muslims at that time was quite negative, formed largely by the general social attitude towards Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan. In my mind Ahmadiyya Community was some weird cult devoid of common sense. Therefore, when I found out that a good friend of mine was an Ahmadi Muslim, I was quite surprised.
At this point, however, I was less interested in the finer details of differences between Ahmadiyya Islam and Sunni Islam teachings. I had enough trouble trying to understand religion at a basic level and did not care much about complicated sectarian discussions. So I badgered Hamid with some general questions about God, religion and the purpose of man’s creation. We had some discussions, and Hamid gave me two books to read: Islam’s Response to Contemporary Issues by the Fourth Khalifa, and his biography, A Man of God. I had been searching for a logical and humane approach towards religion but was disappointed with what I had found thus far.
However, reading Islam’s Response to Contemporary Issues was a totally refreshing experience. I was not yet ready to say that I believed in a particular religion, but I remember saying to myself after reading the book that if there ever were a religion worthy of following, it must look like the one described in that book. I loved the way the Fourth Khalifa approached religion. He spoke with the precision of a scientist. He always began with “first principles” and then gradually built his case through the rules of logic. There was also a deep sense of love, compassion and humanity in whatever he wrote or said. It is hard to express it in words, but I fell totally in love with his personality.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community began to provide me with the answers that I had been searching for. But conviction of the heart and mind are two separate issues. There were always more questions that I could have asked. At what point do I draw the line between skepticism and belief? I did not know the answer to this question. I was also perturbed by the idea of praying for myself. How could I do that if I were not willing to call myself a believer? Wouldn’t that be hypocritical? Even selfish perhaps? And then there was the chicken and the egg problem. If one needs to have faith to pray sincerely, and must pray sincerely to have faith, where should I begin?
My solution to these conundrums was that I could only pray to a possible God. I would pray that if You are truly there then guide me to what is right and what is true. In my heart I already had the suspicion that the truth might be Ahmadiyya. Therefore, afraid that I might stay away from it because of the social sanctions against it, I would add that I was willing to pay whatever price it took to find and accept the truth. Over the next few years, I continued to read whatever I could on Islam Ahmadiyya. I did not discuss this much with others. I preferred to study on my own instead. The web was a great tool for me. Alislam.org, the Community’s website, was just beginning to develop and I must have been one of its most voracious consumers at the time.
My greatest attractions were the “Q&A” sessions conducted by the Fourth Khalifa, as well as his sermons. I could spend hours listening to him. While I found the message of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community very attractive, I was extremely repulsed by the attitude of orthodox clerics towards the Community. How could they lose all sense of humanity and prevent Ahmadi Muslims from practicing their faith in Pakistan? How could man become arrogant enough to decide who is a Muslim and who is not, as a matter of law? It was because of such attitudes of orthodox clerics that I never took them seriously in their allegations against the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
After finishing my undergraduate education at MIT, I decided to pursue a doctorate in Economics, also at MIT. I finished my PhD in 2001 and moved to Chicago to start my first job as an Assistant Professor at University of Chicago. While I was in Boston, I had stopped going to the local mosque for a long time because I could not pray behind an Imam who condoned an intolerant interpretation of Islam. There was an Ahmadiyya mosque near Boston but it was far and I did not have a car. So now that I had a car in Chicago, I thought I should look for an Ahmadiyya Muslim mosque. Once I found the local Ahmadiyya Muslim mosque in Chicago, I began going for Friday prayers. I might have done so for the rest of my life without becoming an Ahmadi Muslim. I had already acknowledged that the Ahmadiyya interpretation of Islam was the only one that made sense.
Why then go through the hassle of conversion and all the social conflicts that come along with it? After all, what is the line beyond which one says, “I believe”? The human mind is a specialist when it comes to making excuses. However something changed in March of 2002. I cannot say how and why. The Holy Prophet Muhammad said that the key to a person’s heart is in Allah’s hands. So one day Allah changed my heart. There is no other explanation for it. I felt a strong desire that I must sign the initiation form. I had to do it. There was no other option for me anymore. Like a kid in the candy store, I had to have it. My parents were quite unhappy at my decision to become an Ahmadi Muslim.
This trial has been the most difficult for me since the last thing I ever wanted to do was to upset my parents in their old age. It is all the more difficult given how much they have done for me. But life ultimately owes its existence to God, and I pray that we may all find peace in Him. While there are sacrifices in the path of a convert, these are overshadowed by the fact that man at his core is a moral being. There is nothing more rewarding than being truthful to one’s conscience. The greatest gift of Ahmadiyya teachings is that they introduce you to the true concept and reality of God. Everything that is pure and good is to be found in God.
Therefore one can never be truly spiritual unless one tries to get closer to God by developing attributes that are in His likeness: developing compassion for humanity, being sincere, treating everyone with absolute justice, and saying the truth even when it may have negative immediate consequences. When one struggles to become better only to attain closeness to God, God never leaves such a person alone. This is the ultimate lesson of Islam Ahmadiyya and the ultimate gift for a convert. I have been fortunate to serve the Community in various capacities. One of my greatest joys has been the many friendships that I have formed through MKA.
I have had the privilege of meeting many remarkable individuals whose sincerity, desire to serve humanity, and selfless dedication to work tirelessly for the good of others, leaves me awestruck. At a time when religion has been distorted to create mayhem in many parts of the world, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community provides a true picture of what Islam is supposed to be.
Categories: The Muslim Times