Auf Wiedersehen POL 230

POL 230,
It has been a distinct pleasure getting to know all 38 of you over the course of this semester. In this final post, I want to provide you guys with some feedback and food for thought.

We've covered a lot in this class. I introduced you to international relations theory and we've covered everything from the deep history of the field, to the so-called "great debates", and more realism than any of you guys wanted. I know you all read quite a bit (or should have), but that is what is required of an advanced level academic course.

In addition to learning about IR theory, you all should have developed core reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. These translatable skills will help you in whatever you do in the future.

In reflecting on this blog, I will note that about 1/3 of you guys wrote excellent posts, 1/3 of your guys wrote decent posts, and the other 1/3 were well...they could have better. This is a tool to reflect on what you've read and sharpen your writing and analytical skills. Although it may have seemed onerous, I'm positive that it was a beneficial exercise for you all.

I read the vast majority of your posts - I intend to finish reading the last few soon! - and commented on them. I hope that the feedback I've provided has been benificial to you all.

In reflecting on the class in general, I think it turned out quite well. Even though it was a chore to wake up and be on time for an 8am class, you guys managed to do quite well. Although I would have loved for even higher engagement, I recognize that early morning classes can be tough. That being said, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.

As many of you now head off for the summer to refuel and recharge, I wish you all the best in your future lives and academic endeavors. Below is some final data that may be of interest to you all. All data is current as of May 13, 2015:

• The first blog post was posted by me on January 30, 2015.
• Our blog essentially lasted 3-months.
• Out of the 658 blog posts, 47 were done by me. The majority of those posts were referrals to interesting news items.
• You all posted 611 blog posts.
• The required number of posts per student was 20. The actual average was 16.1 posts per student.

Thank you Sir Nausherwan

Do you all really want to know who the biggest idealists currently present at LUMS are? May I introduce to all of you Mr Mazhar Chinoy and Mr Yasser Hashmi who promised our parents on the day of our orientation that they would look after us as their children and that this institution was built on the notion of familyhood where everyone is treated as a family member. On that day Mr Hashmi claimed to our parents, and I quote, that "we request all of you to entrust us with your children. From this day onward, let us share your responsibilities of taking care of your children and meeting all of their needs. Your children are now ours. We will do everything in our power to look after them just like the way you have been looking after them till now. From this day onward, your role of parenting ends and our role of guardianship begins. Your child has every right to run after our instructors and make lives miserable for them. They are there to serve you and your children. Their doors are always open for the students. Therefore, we urge all the students to take full advantage of this opportunity extended by LUMS and make the best use of the services that they provide you. Parents need to not worry about the well-being and security of their children because I can assure you all that they are now in great hands." Unfortunately in this case, realism has overridden idealism. This may be a hard pill to swallow but the reality is totally different from the picture portrayed by the administration on our orientation day.

So far I have found the attitude of administrators, most of the instructors (not all of them), and the individuals belonging from Registrar Office towards the students to be very cold and weak. On the very first day, they inject students with the belief that that are on their own, which makes it arduous for the freshmen, especially belonging from special backgrounds, to adapt themselves with the surroundings. Most of them have to figure out by themselves about where the tuition fee is generated from, how to select courses and that too before the available seats in that particular course run out, how this institution works and above all, what is really expected from us as students. I have learned all of these procedures through the hard way. Most of the instructors, once again not all of them, that I have come across so far follow this criterion for teaching: give lectures, surprise students with quizzes for which they have to memorize the concepts which would be quizzed, assign them essays and other assignments, mark them and then in the end grade students. Although this standard of teaching is fine, I don't see how this standard or routine makes students feel being part of some family as it allows for minimal interaction between a student and an instructor. I know couple of students who have tried meeting instructors during their office hours and had terrible experiences. What an instructor expects from students before meeting him/her during office hours is that they must consult their problems with his/her teaching assistants. If they fail to satisfy the students then they can pay their instructor a visit during his/her office hours. In most cases, the instructor looses his.her cool somehow for slightest of excuses and ask students to either leave or consult the TA again. Once again I would like to emphasis here that not all the instructors behave in such a manner. I did come across very caring and humble instructors as well but you all have heard about the similar extreme incidents, also involving suing instructors etc,, that have taken place in the past.

I haven't felt part of such a family till the second session of this course. I receive this email, after the third session, with the subject "meet and greet" by Sir Nausherwan. Out of my curiosity I open that email and can't believe my eyes after reading it because this idea of meeting each and every one of the students in person was something new and not that popular here. For a second I questioned myself, have I read it wrongly? After reading it one more time, I assured myself that my eyes were not playing tricks with my mind and that I have correctly read the email which requested me to choose the time slot which would be convenient for me to meet and introduce myself to my instructor. When I knocked on his door, he opened it and warmly welcomed me to a room which serves as an office space for three instructors. I was glad that I decided to show up. During our conversation, I found Sir Nausherwan to be humble, friendly and caring and who also gave patient hearing to me and to the expectations that I had set for this course. Before leaving, I acknowledged sir for taking the initiative of meeting each and every one of us in person and contributing in minimizing this unavoidable communication gaps which exist between students and instructors and between students and the administration. After meeting him, I realized how sincere this guy was to his profession and how serious he was in fulfilling all the duties that are expected from a good instructor to perform. After that meeting, I also realized that if he is willing to go an extra mile to cooperate with us and comment on hundreds of blocs written by us, then I also have the obligation to cooperate with him and make contributions as well that are expected from a student. From that day onward, I made a pledge with myself that no matter what, I have to get a very good grade in his course and the reason why I made such a pledge is because his personality inspired me to make efforts from my end. Having those long discussions, pissing each other off, passing jocular remarks in every session, commenting on others' blocks, and respecting each others' opinions etc. forced me to feel that I was a member of  this little family that was created by our instructor. Sir Nausherwan is the only instructor that I know so far who has emphasized a lot on writing. He equipped us with writing skills which I believe that every student here must possess them; the writing techniques and standards that should have been taught to the students in their very first semester. The Writing and Communication course that I took failed to equip students with proper writing techniques and I know couple of students, who took this writing course, who are still suffering in writing good pieces and articles. But unfortunately, no one here has given too much importance to writing.

Although my ambition is to become an entrepreneur, this course has developed my interests in International Relations and I am glad that I took this course. Above all, I was blessed to have such a caring instructor like Sir Nausherwan and I pray to Allah to bless all of us with instructors like him for the remaining semesters. Last but not the least, I wish you sir all the best for your future endeavours. May you accomplish your PhD degree with flying colours. Just like you are expecting us to be the future leaders who would be bringing positive changes, likewise, we also hope that you put your PhD degree in good use and therefore play your part in making this world a better place for all of us to live in. 

Bye Bye Blogging!

I did not opt for this course; I was forced to take it. Thanks to the ever increasing student population at LUMS I did not get any other 100 level courses. Given that I had not ever taken any political science course before this class seemed hell in the beginning. To add to my misery we were made to blog. Blogging for me was harder than reading the never ending pages assigned to us. This is simply because when it comes to technology I am not very smart. However, the one thing that I can say for sure is that this class has undeniably improved my technological skills so I am glad we were made to blog. I’d also like to believe that after writing 20 blog posts and forced comments under others blogs, my writing skills may have slightly improved. Well maybe not, but this is something that only Sir or our poor TA who had to read all the blogs would know.

Moreover, I probably will never forget about Realism thanks to the numerous pages written by Mersheimer, Waltz and company (The list of these scholars would probably never end). Even though I have no interest in politics and I am not even going to pursue this as my career, I still enjoyed this course a lot. I now am glad that I was forcefully enrolled into this course otherwise I would’ve missed on the multiple ‘isms’ and how they shape the world that we live in.

The only thing that I was not able to learn from this class was how to cite properly. After spending hours on citations and probably more time on citing things than writing my exam, I somehow still managed get a 0/3. Though I do hope to perfect my citation skills one day. Lastly, another important thing that I learnt was that no matter how bad things may seem we should never lose hope in our country. So let’s be optimistic about Pakistan (and our grades)!

Last Blog.

Going back to the beginning of this semester, I clearly remember my reaction when we were introduced to the concept of blogging: WHY DO WE HAVE TO DO THIS? The time consuming effort wasted in doing an entire reading and with great difficulty, completing 250 words twice a week, acted as a burden on my already monotonous weekly schedule. It took a while to understand the benefits of these blogs, but when I did, blogging has become a blessing rather than a burden. 

One thing I do not credit to myself is the ability to write well. The idea of planning ones essay, then structuring it, then concentrating on the world limit, the tone and grammar, and then restructuring again. Finally finishing it off with the most difficult part of this course: The Chicago style of citations. I never thought I would be able to cater to all these essay requirements and shunned off the possibility of even trying, until I actually noticed a marked improvement in my ability to write. Writing blogs is more of a breeze now, where the 250 word minimum limit seems too little to get ones point across. Today, I think I have strengthened not only my ability to structure and improve an essay, but understand the necessity of writing well if one wants to make a future in social sciences. This newly discovered ability of mine to write coherently is the most important thing I am taking away from this course.

Even thought writing is the most important thing I learned in this course, that does not mean I am discrediting the world of International Relations. Having taken Intro to International Relations only last semester, the ism concepts were not new to me. I felt an introduction to the subject was not enough, the reason for which I took Theories of International Relations this semester. Now, not only do I know the tenets of each dominant ism, I can also compare and contrast the applicability of every theory to real life political situations. Concentrating on current world affairs such as Benyamin Netanyahu's speech, and the USA-China conflict, we were able to analyse the situations and apply our own understanding of the course to them. 

This course has kept me a bit confused, but thats great. Finding myself to be somewhere in the middle of realism and constructivism, I will now pursue to educate myself in these ism's even further, so i can finally decide which school of thought I belong too. So till then, I categorise myself as a social realist, and till I have enough education to give one up, I will always believe in the effects of both the international political arena, and culture/identities on the actions of international relation actors.

Pakistan now enjoying strong business culture, good roads: The Economist

This report was published yesterday and I thought maybe I should share it with you all.

Link for The Economist report

New Book by Wendt

After Alexander Wendt published his first book, Social Theory of International Politics (1999), he has not published another book since. Apparently last month he has gone ahead and done so and the new book is called Quantum Mind and Social Science. He attempts to use quantum theory to understand the social sciences. Give the abstruse and esoteric nature of this, I highly doubt it will cause a ripple in IR. Anyhow for those who are interested, you can learn more about the book here:

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-social-science/quantum-mind-and-social-science-unifying-physical-and-social-ontology?format=PB&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Books

Final blog

The September 11 Attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon resulted in a radical change in terms of international politics and the course of events. The sheer courage with which a group of people tried to awaken the sleeping giant of America gave rise to a whole new era of phenomena like Islamophobia, War on Terror, Homeland Security and others. About 3000 people were killed in this act of terror that shook the world but with this incident also gave rise to various counter alternatives and conspiracy theories. The former Director General of ISPR is quoted as saying that he finds it hard to believe that four airplanes are brought into a synchronized hijacking and attack the securest two institutions in of the most secure nations of the world. How it that the air transport authorities is were incompetent to such an extent that they were not able to intercept the coming of these planes for over forty minutes?

These and other examples such as the results of this incident that took over such as the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq for reasons that proved to be wrong later raises speculation as to was it really the work of a militant group or some state agency? The fact that countries like Afghanistan and Iraq had almost nothing to do with it were invaded and destroyed and the nation from which most of those perpetrators belonged to, i.e. Saudi Arabia was made the strongest ally in the Muslim world fails to satisfy the inquiring mind as to the veracity of the media narrative.