What did Harvard teach?

What did Harvard teach?

The farewell bell is ringing for the dreamy journey I started two years ago. The journey from Bandarban to Boston was incredible, strange, bizarre, amazing! Standing in the middle of the Rohingya crisis on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, I could not imagine one day setting foot in one of the best schools in the world. , Graduating from there after almost twenty-five years is as much a joy as touching a lot of dreams for a little man like me.

However, there is sadness hidden in this Harish too - the convocation that will take place on the next 28th will only be online. Corona has snatched away this transcendent transition of the supernatural, a latent desire I cherished - to take a picture of my parents behind me in a black graduation gown and a statue of John Harvard behind me - where is that? As soon as she said this to her mother, she said, look, how many people have lost everything in this atrocity, what else is there than that? I thought, that's really it.

Is it possible to highlight what I have learned in two years in two pages? Nah- not possible. But the original perceptions can be highlighted in bold! Let him try!

Harvard's first teaching is that organizations don't make people big - people make organizations big. Institutions only give people a platform; University or traditional education is not essential for the highest development of humanity. This has been proved time and again by thousands of "Oxford-Harvard-un-read" great men including Bangabandhu, Mahatma Gandhi, Nazrul. With that in mind, the most intimidating question I ask myself as a freshman at Harvard is - do I really deserve it? What if this "Harvard" tag is the highest achievement of my life? What could be more ridiculous, tragic and embarrassing than if my epitaph read, "Masroof Hossain is sleeping here, who once studied at Harvard"? If the education I have been given for two years is of no use to anyone, then spending so much time, labor and money is a complete failure. The problem is, the forerunners include Nobel laureates, presidents / prime ministers, billionaires, and the great charioteers of the last four hundred years. There is not a single point of contribution to the treasury to mention this vile. Completely empty treasury, completely destitute, empty. This is my first lesson in feeling like an ant standing by the sea. Despite having so many opportunities in thirty-five years, I could do nothing but eat, sleep and read a couple of books on my own leisure. Diamond-special. The rest of my life will be spent in the struggle to change this situation, I understand this oath.

Speaking of Harvard's second education, Amartya Sen, Eric Maskin, Jack Yashtak and Michael Kramer will be mentioned. All four are Nobel laureates, with the exception of Jack Yashtack, all three in economics, Jack only in medicine. Of these, I am a direct student of Professor Sen and Professor Maskin. I don't know. ” This experience first took place in the office of His Highness Amartya Sen. Even then he did not have a course, I just went to meet him from afar. When asked a question about the political economy of Bangladesh, he smiled softly and said, look, this is a wonderful question - a book can be written about it, but it is beyond my knowledge. The fact that I have made a small contribution to the economy does not mean that I am knowledgeable about everything. You should rather meet someone who is an expert on the subject. Same experience with Michael Kramer. Michael Kramer, who won the Nobel Prize from Harvard last year along with MIT's Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Dufflow. The first is, I don't know. The second is that guessing something would be wrong. And the third answer is, you better contact Mushfiqur Mubarak (Bangladeshi-American economist) at Yale University - tell me. He has research on this, he can say it well.

We went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), another world-renowned institution in our neighborhood, to listen to the lecture of Nobel laureate in medicine, Jack Yashtack, in 2005. Don't worry. Instead, choose a problem that has not been worked on much and that you will not bother to think about for a long time. Stick to it, you will see that it will be solved, along with the rewards will come. What is the loss if not? There is no reward for the joy that one gets. Most recently, Eric Maskin taught a course in philosophy as a co-teacher with Amartya Sen. He is such a big personality, one of the current leaders of economics - I didn't realize it even after sitting in the seat next to him for the whole semester. I didn't know that Amartya Sen and another Nobel laureate were teaching us in the same class. Knowing where to stop from knowing and openly acknowledging one's own ignorance - this is my second lesson at Harvard.

In the story of Mahabharata, Yaksha asked Yudhisthira, O Yudhisthira, what is the most amazing thing in this world? Yudhisthira said, "Even though hundreds of people die every day, people move in such a way that they will not die in a thousand years. This is the most surprising thing. If anyone asks me, my answer is, 'This is the same person through social media. He understands literature better than he does, he understands philosophy better than Socrates, he understands cinema better than Ray, he understands coronavirus better than Dr. Fawcett and he understands warfare better than Napoleon - that's the biggest surprise in the world today. " But these four thinkers, whom I have met, do not go out of their way to make a point, they are humble at every moment - they speak directly about the limitations of their knowledge - this is my second lesson at Harvard. Achieving humility like these is almost impossible in one's life, so, as usual, one has to spend the next few days in pursuit of humility - it is also clear.

The third teaching, not Harvard, can be called America's core teaching - Freedom of Speech. Reverend Brian Hayer is an eighty-year-old professor at Harvard Kennedy School. He was a teaching assistant to Henry Kissinger and learned the ins and outs of international relations. Every time he brings up the subject of Kissinger in a policy course on the use of force, I remind him in public of the role of this brutal man in the genocide of the Bengalis in 1971. In the final term paper, we have directly described Kissinger and the American policy in the liberation war of Bangladesh as inhuman, criminal, inhuman and war crimes. My idea was that the professor would not give me good marks in this course. He not only gave the highest marks, but also praised the paper in a handwritten note.

Evaluating a point of view that is neutrally different, rising above personal beliefs, seemed to me to be an alien object. I went to the school of theology to study the Gita under Professor Francis Clooney, where I was the only Muslim - a number of traditionalists, a Hindu monk (Swami Sarvapriyananda), the rest Christians, Buddhists, Baha'is, Jews and others. There were also atheists, agnostics and spiritualists. Interestingly, Professor Clooney himself is a Christian Jesuit monk, knows clear Sanskrit, he is one of the best Western scholars of the Gita and traditional religion. In his class I disagreed, protested, argued with some of the interpretations of the Gita-even directly stated that this interpretation was not acceptable to me and that is why. No one forgot how to become a Muslim and I am arguing so much about the Gita. They have accepted what I have said is right, and they have corrected what I have said wrong. My religious identity is not significant here, the effort to acquire knowledge is important to them. They are not ashamed to learn from middle-aged foreign students, their personal ego does not stand in the way of their learning. I dream that such an environment of knowledge will be created in our country as well.

The fourth lesson I received was sitting in the registrar's office at Harvard Kennedy School. Then I just got the second semester grades, like a typical Bangladeshi student, I am calculating what the points are, how the CGPA is coming. To show my bravery, I took a few rigorous technical courses at MIT with no background. The grade in those two courses did not come as expected, I am calculating it again and again. Since MIT is another institution, converting its grade points to Harvard rules is also a work of art. All in all, a thousand questions in my head, Ish, what if the CGPA goes down a little ?! Calling the registrar's office to find out, he said, "Brother, I don't understand your question. Come to me during office hours. Let's see what your story is." After leaving, I said to the officer-in-charge, "Brother, this is the situation. Hearing the question, he looked at me for about five minutes, then said, what do you do with the CGPA calculation? What is the need for this? Hands on my head! South Asian students sacrifice themselves in the hope of raising Point Zero Zero One CGPA and what is this ass ?!

I said, what will happen with CGPA? If you want to do PhD, do research, don't want to see CGPA? And I studied so hard, I can not calculate the CGPA? The officer in the registrar's office was more furious at my question. He said, "Why, brother, it is written in your transcript. Did you get a letter grade (i.e. A, A minus, B plus, etc.) in any course? Everyone works with it. Why do you have so many headaches with CGPA at Masters level?" And CGPA is not written anywhere in the transcript! ”- This time my hand is on my head, CGPA is not written in the transcript ?! O God! Then why did I die working so hard day and night ?! ” The registrar's office officer replied, "Look, brother, the idea here is that since you've been admitted to Harvard, you all have a minimum level of intelligence - at Kennedy School we have a CGPA of an average of B-minus (5 out of 10) for all courses." . The registrar's office calculates this CGPA, if someone's result is very bad then we calculate how it will be passed, except that the CGPA does not exist in the student's transcript or number sheet. The reason behind this is that you are a student of Kennedy School, but it turned out that if you went out of your comfort zone and took a very difficult course in MIT or business school - even if your grades were bad, you could learn something that might change your life. You were later found to be pursuing a PhD on that line, or choosing a career on that subject. This is a huge possibility for a student, Harvard is against limiting the CGPA for fear of retaining it. You don't like other subjects because you have come to study public administration, or you can't find your passion in any other discipline - isn't it? ”

This thing was a real cultural shock for me. Really, the immense potential of each student, by what right do we block it? If a person studying economics with honors later finds his pleasure in physics, shouldn't the education system give way to his passion? Pramath Chowdhury said, well-educated people are only self-educated. If a student of a different discipline works hard out of his own interest and can prove to teachers that he is qualified to be admitted to a PhD in a new subject, what right will he not be allowed to learn?