Harvard to Shakargarh: Legendary academician finds eternal peace in homeland

No matter where people move in this world, it is difficult to forget their homeland as memories of childhood keep the love for that place fresh. This extraordinary love even doesn't end with death and some even want to be buried in their own land where they walked during their childhood no matter how much time they had spent abroad.

Professor Dr Kiren Aziz Chaudhry, a renowned scholar, author and economist at international level, was one of them. She wrote her will in the United States, wishing to be buried in Narowal district’s Shakargarh – the native village of her father Chaudhry Anwar Aziz, a former minister and famous politician of Pakistan.

Professor Kiren passed away after suffering from a heart attack on June 25, 2020, at her home in Berkeley Hills, California and her body was shifted to Pakistan despite several hurdles due to Covid-19 pandemic, only to fulfil her lifetime wish to be buried in her hometown.

Amid tears and sobs, she was laid to rest in her ancestral village on Tuesday after the funeral prayer was led by Pir of Ali Pur Shareef Syed Zafar Iqbal Shah. Thousands attended the funeral.

Professor Kiren was the sister of PML-N leader Daniyal Chaudhry and cousin of Member of the National Assembly Mehnaz Akbar Aziz. She had a unique and impressive personality with a great love for her motherland, its culture and its local languages despite living in the United States for decades.

She had completed her PhD from Harvard and had been teaching in different renowned universities and institutes. She was born on March 17, 1959, in Pakistan but achieved tremendous heights after moving to the United State.

Her journey culminated at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught political science as an associate professor.

There was no school in her village when she was growing and had to travel to a nearby village school where she started learning at the age of five while sitting on jute runners under the trees, writing on a wooden slate with a reed pen and ink made from lamp black. She went to and from school on horseback because there was no direct road to the school.

After her family moved to Lahore, she attended Cathedral School and later at Essena, a private girls' school. She finished her education in Pakistan graduating from Lahore American High School in just three years.

Her college career began at the University of Massachusetts, transferring to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she received her BA summa cum laude and high distinction in Political Science and English Literature in May 1980. She received the Senior Honours Thesis Award for best Senior Honours Thesis at the University of Michigan.

At Harvard University, where she completed her graduation, Prof Kiren received many awards. She also was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant. In 1988-90, she was a Kukin Fellow, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.

Shortly after receiving her PhD from Harvard University, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley where she received several awards and fellowships, including a Prytanean Alumnae Faculty Award, two Mellon Grants, she was awarded an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Peace and Security Fellowship in 1996-98, and in 2001-03, a second MacArthur Peace and Security Fellowship.

Several of her articles and papers were published in prestigious Political Science and Political Economy periodicals, all of them can be found online. But the writing achievement she prised most was her a book titled “The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East”, for which she was co-recipient of the Albert Hourani Prize, awarded by the Middle East Association of America for best book on the Middle East in 1998.

Shortly before her death her second book, “Trauma and Memory in Istanbul”, reached final edit stage and one of her colleagues has offered to see it through to publication by the Cornell University Press.

Later in the summer of 2001, she taught at the Bogazici University's Department of Political Science in Istanbul, Turkey. Her Berkeley “Post Fordism” class, which she started teaching in 2005, was her favourite.

She also taught at LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences) for few years where she impressed students and other faculty members with her wonderful linguistic skills and knowledge about the world before she gave a shock to them one day by speaking in Punjabi fluently and in a pure local accent that she got from her father Chaudhary Anwar Aziz. She had been advising Pakistani students to not to shun their mother languages otherwise they would lose their roots.

She was also a fluent speaker of the Arabic language and had served as a consultant to the US government in economic affairs.