FUUAST VC appointment: HEC chief says university’s senate will have a say
The university has been without a permanent VC since its vice chancellor Dr Mohammad Qaiser was put in charge of Karachi University (KU) this February. A nine-member search committee, headed by Dr Laghari, then sifted through applications for the top job, and finally settled on four names, which were then forwarded to the university senate. The senate, on July 29, settled on three of them, Dr Syed Altaf Hussain, former VC of Allama Iqbal Open University, Prof. Dr Zafar Iqbal, dean of arts at KU, and Dr Moinuddin Ahmed, a professor at the Urdu university’s botany department, and sent them to President Asif Ali Zardari, who is the chancellor of all federal universities in the country.
However, the committee’s work seemed to have amounted to nothing as Zardari, as well as Dr Laghari, rejected all three names on August 13 and sent the ball back to the committee’s court.
Dr Laghari had sent a letter of objection to the president, saying that all three academics whose names had been forwarded by the FUUAST senate were not competent for the job. Members of the university’s faculty, senate and the search committee believed that it was rather counter intuitive that the HEC chairperson had rejected the names after heading the committee that had brought the names forward in the first place.
Search process 2.0
While the search committee has grudgingly taken back to the boardroom to go through the process a second time, some of its members as well as the university’s faculty did not hide their contempt for Dr Laghari, who they alleged was trying to bypass the senate. They threatened to protest against the “dictatorship and nepotism of the HEC” from today.
The appointment process restarted after university senate met on October 19. Around 38 candidates, including former KU VC Prof. Dr Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui, are reportedly vying for the post this time. The HEC chairperson had, in his controversial letter, asked each member of the selection committee to choose seven names from the applicant pool and directly send them over to the HEC by December 5.
“Dr Laghari had asked us in a letter to finalise the names which will then be sent directly to the President for approval. This is a sheer violation of the university act which upholds the senate over the search committee,” a member of search committee told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity.
“His [Dr Laghari’s] letter states that interviews of the best seven candidates will be held on December 14, after which three names will be sent to the President,” informed this member.
Dr Laghari, however, clarified that there was no way that the university senate would be left out from the process. “The search committee will ultimately forward short-listed names to the senate in accordance with the university act. [The senate] will then forward three names to the President,” he said. He added that selection committee members might have “misunderstood” his intent or might have been puzzled by “some ambiguity in the text of the letter.”
The way the process will work this time, explained Dr Laghari, is that each committee member will forward seven names from the list. After considering all the nominations, the committee will then short-list the seven best candidates, who will be invited for interviews. The names of four successful candidates will then be forwarded to the senate, which will then send three of them to the president for approval.
Dr Laghari added that HEC wants “complete transparency” when it comes to universities appointing new VCs, and that resumes of the 38 applicants have also been sent to each member of the search committee.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 3rd, 2012.
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