Our paper on gender gaps in voter turnout in Pakistan “Canvassing the Gatekeepers” is finally out in print and Pakistani women voters are featured on this
@apsrjournal
issue cover ☺️🥹 😭
@asadliaqat
@shaandana
…
i want faculty who are rightly outraged at the harvard debacle to vocally support graduate worker unionization. the power disparity btw faculty/grad makes this worse & the solution can't just be well intentioned faculty using their power, it has to involve actually ceding power.
I want to enjoy this but I’m honestly at a point in my life where I can’t help be bitter and resentful that women don’t get to have fun in public without consequences. If this was a woman she would be getting death threats.
I won’t be coming back for any university sponsored reunions, but I’m a
@Columbia
alum and I’m back on campus today to show my solidarity with these brave students and support their demands. This is our campus.
I long for a busy bustling loud all women’s food street in Pakistan where my friends and I can loiter late night after iftar all night drinking chai laugh loudly and be silly then eat sehri and ride our bikes or take the metro home at dawn
happy graduation to meee!!! (and everyone else)
actual regalia: would’ve cost more than a stimulus check 🎓
this IG filter: free 📸
perpetual imposter syndrome: comes for free with the dr title 🤷🏽♀️
the dark circles: takes generations of desi woman genes to perfect 👌🏽
defended my PhD today.
thanks are due to so many generous amazing people who were part of a long and often difficult journey.
for now: *huge* thanks to my advisors and external readers:
@maqartan
, john huber,
@malahtun
@dawn_teele
&
@nikhargaikwad
😍
The father of Western philosophy Plato, believed one must elevate oneself in thought & learning prior to being able to delve in democratic tradition. I must admit I've always felt one must attain a level of education prior to attaining voting privilege
#justsaying
This is a really popular take and it’s at odds with how our parliamentary electoral system works. Khan retains his assembly seat, which is what he was directly voted to by the public. He loses his PM position which he was voted to (and remains subject to vote of) MNAs.
Imran Khan wasn't voted out by the Pakistani public. He was ousted by 174 opposition politicians who joined forces in the National Assembly. Millions of Pakistanis didn't get a say in the matter and Shehbaz Sharif has no democratic mandate to lead Pakistan.
I can’t believe there are people with entire PHDS in POLITICS who don’t recognize “outside agitator” as a strategic trope used to delegitimize movements. Even if non-students are part of organizing, the idea that you would hear this and not be skeptical is 🤯
We as faculty at US institutions cannot be ethically complicit in this administration’s anti immigration agenda by teaching in what will be an effectively segregated system of education that excludes our international students.
Biden has mentioned how the scenes in Afghanistan are devastating for Americans and himself. He has made no mention of the Afghan people who are living this reality, for whom these are not “scenes”
now that it’s official I can share!
I’m moving to DC and joining
@AU_SIS
as an Assistant Professor in the dept. of politics, governance and econ in Fall 24! ☺️
SO excited to join a vibrant community with brilliant colleagues, and v thankful to everyone who made it possible. 🙏🏽
some of the replies i got to pointing out there are 0 women on PK's economic advisory council:
1) welcome to the gutter of feminism
2) gender is no qualification
3) having a vagina and a phd isn't enough to become a national economic adviser
4) tear up your american passport
how late is too late to celebrate that
you got a PhD in this life?
deeply thankful to
@MarvinCBrownIV
for hosting a beautiful gathering to remind me that 3 YRS + after you have your own advisees is *not* too late, & to the best family & friends for sharing in joy, cake & bubbles
to the white male political scientist sitting next to me at a coffeeshop who started a sentence with “I don’t want to stereotype but” and went on to say something offensive about their foreign female grad student: I hear you I see you and I see your lanyard.
#MPSA2019
I learnt how to cycle last year. At 33. Today I got a bright red bike, put a bell with an ice cream cone on her, and went on the first solo bike ride of my life. Here’s to doing things on no one’s timeline but your own.
Well done PM: On the instructions of PM
@ImranKhanPTI
Mr Babar Awan today wrote a letter to Speaker NA and suggested to refer the highly controversial Domestic Violence Bill to Council of Islamic Ideology for its consideration in the light of Islamic teachings.
what I gleaned from Biden’s speech is something that was just as much on display during this presidential campaign and past ones: that non American lives do not merit even passing mention, let alone serious consideration except insofar as they threaten US national interest.
The violent persecution of the Ahmadi community, in life and death, is enabled not just by state inaction and active enablement, but also by the extreme social bigotry that most of us Pakistanis at home and abroad are fully complicit in.
Hey ladies!
does he want to “pick your brain on something” or is he asking you to contribute just conveniently short of what would merit bringing you on as coauthor?
this is going to be a long thread about why i, a political scientist, am going to vote in the Pakistani General Elections on 25 July (and also other things) 1/N
Pakistani men will travel across the world to police women’s mobility.
Once taking the subway in NY, a middle aged man asked me what I do etc, pleasant enough small talk. Then asked why I was going downtown when my university was uptown.
Aap ko kisne mera chawkidaar banaya???
If you are starting graduate school, you will get a lot of advice from people better suited to give advice than me. My only piece of advice: figure out ergonomics NOW. I (and too many friends) learned this the hard way. /1
Academia is mostly rejection, and no small part of what I value about coauthorship and collaborative work is not having to weather that part solo. Processing it alone is always harder, takes longer, makes for much more internalization of rejection as a reflection on myself.
When I moved to the US I was shocked by the normalized hypersexualization of Asian women. White men feel perfectly comfortable saying openly that Asian women are their “type”. There’s a straight line from that depersonalization to racist violence.
#StopAAPIHate
have now received news of family members in India succumbing to COVID, and that local graveyards are full. no words. can only hope and pray that the situation turns around and that there is relief for all those suffering.😔
please do not casually speculate on what the guidance might mean for international graduate students. i can only imagine how anxious they are right now. i am waiting for my university's intl students and scholars office to issue guidance.
sth that is absolutely enraging to me about EJMR discourse is the sheer SPACE that the concerns (mostly voiced by white men) about the (improbable) consequences to posters are taking up relative to an accounting of real costs borne by those targeted.
yesterday I gave a presentation and a Pakistani student had brought their mother to hear it and afterwards she introduced herself and said “beta we are so proud of you” and it was so very lovely and makes the slog worth it.
A gentle reminder that Pakistan does not have comprehensive exit polls and the media narrative that is being constructed around youth vote is based on… vibes. The narrative around an increase in women’s turnout is verifiable. It’s verifiably wrong.
It’s official! after a rocky start to my leave year amid various immigration and travel related weirdness, I’m going to be spending the fall semester visiting at
@SAISHopkins
. Excited for the vibrant South Asia politics community here, and fall in DC ☺️🍁
Pakistani men’s consistent expertise in the “real issues faced by real women” is at odds with their unwillingness to ever actually listen when real women are speaking. “Real woman” is a rhetorical device deployed by dudes to distract, don’t be fooled, she doesn’t exist.
my sympathies to the grad student who had to find out about their error like this. the PhD is hard enough without being the subject of public ridicule for slipping up along the way.
I'm grading grad student papers and one of them keeps using "it's" when "its" is appropriate and I'm not saying I'm a harsh grader but I'm torn between giving the paper a failing grade or stabbing the author with an ice pick.
I found it near impossible to complete all the assigned reading in grad school. The volume left me feeling always “behind” & anxious. It’s taken yrs to enjoy & absorb texts again. I’ve tried to avoid syllabus “bloat” before but this semester I’m really leaning into less is more.
The kind of decisions that get made when women (those who disproportionately use gas to cook in households) aren’t consulted. Women’s preferences around *timing* of gas loadshedding is something I documented in my dissertation research…some women were waking up at 3am to cook
I don't know
@nataliemj10
but I appreciate her courage so much.
I felt too self conscious to call this out when it happened to me incessantly. I - with use of my full name - have been subject to vile sexualized, racialized, Islamophobic attacks on this disgusting website /1
after an incident of brutal violence against a Pakistani woman, other women have to face the whiplash of having their measly scraps of freedom and mobility called into question and policed. please spare them of your “protection” today.
So who will write the essay about a song with the lyrics “woh yaar hai jo khushboo ki tarah, jiski zubaan urdu ki tarah” from a movie about the Indian army’s violent excesses in the NorthEast being performed for Modi by diaspora Indians at the White House. 🧐
the decision to revoke PTI's party symbol is of course part of a larger process of throttling the party in advance of General Elections, it also does an immense disservice to voters by actively reducing information and making ballot papers confusing
As a Columbia alum (CC’11, GSAS’20) I’m disgusted by my university’s repression of student protest. All my alumni pride has always come from being part of a student body with a long history and vibrant present of mobilizing against injustice. More power to the students 💪🏽🍉
to the pakistanis pointing to the events in Delhi to score some weird moral high ground points in this moment: shame on you for looking for victory in human tragedy.
+ the harvard graduate union raised the issue of third party arbitration for harassment complaints well before this news. grad students have intimate experience of these processes. let them systematically make collective demands on institutions
it’s my last month at Yale, and something I’m really proud of helping achieve during my time as junior faculty is for Yale “South Asia” to start engaging more and having a a real presence in Pakistan. It’s a start, much bigger than me, and something to build on. 🇵🇰
SASC is still reeling from the buzz of the Workshop on Climate & Water Justice in South Asia, organized in collaboration with
@GurmaniSchool
in Lahore! Thank you to our panelists, attendees, and colleagues at LUMS for supporting and engaging in such critical conversations.
at the moment if you speak to anyone in India the best response you can hope for is some version of “we are okay so far, but...”
there is no unconditional okay. all are suffering by at most one degree of separation + collective psychological trauma of witnessing tragedy
nobody talks enough about how males in your family have a morbid tendency to behave like a know-all and dominate every political conversation, looking down on the females who try to participate with perceptive inputs, and that is so sad.
“International scholars have visa and other travel considerations that would be severely disrupted by cancellation”
Visa and travel are severely disrupted when APSA chooses to locate in Canada. Don’t make this about international scholars.
Given BB’s death anniversary on Dec 27, and all kinds of recent spotlight on Maryam Nawaz, I’ve been thinking about the gendered nature of dynastic politics in PK, and the research that has helped me understand it. 🧵/1
from my first semester of teaching, I have an email from a student saying how a bell hooks reading made them feel less alone. what a beautiful gift to produce a body of work that has that kind of impact.❤️
hello! here is a draft syllabus for a seminar called political economy of gender in south asia that i will teach in the spring, inshallah. feedback is very welcome.
not in a place to replicate it this year, but a reminder (to myself) that I’m capable of this level of cranberry tart + shahi tukra double dessert ambition and perfection ca. Friendsgiving 2019 ☺️
The Pakistan pigeon flyer whose pigeon is being touted as spy
#pigeon
is surprised as why his contact number is been propagated as a spy code. He urged PM
#Modi
&
#Imrankhan
to help in bringing his pigeon back to him in 48 hours otherwsie he would stage protest at border.
teaching undergrad intro to CP this fall and while im not reinventing the wheel, here are 2 innovations:
1) no gender week because every week is gender week
2) students write reflection pieces throughout the semester using CP lens to analyze a development in US politics
Happy Women’s Day to all the imaginary women that men have talked to in order to gain their solid and confident understanding of women’s real issues and problems!
today my class was discussing the failure of well intentioned policy to achieve gender equal outcomes and my students kept asking “BUT THEN WHAT WORKS???” and I broke and said “revolution, maybe”
while it's heartening to see the new Pakistani govt. create an economic advisory council comprising brilliant minds, there is not a single woman on this council and that's a shame and means losing important perspectives.
There appears to be a wide perception that women’s representation comes at the cost of merit based representation. This is only true if you think merit is somehow inherent to men. /1
1 of my teaching evals from last semester is "She brought a warm and human aspect that made political science feel less abstract and more personal in a field that can feel rigid and cold." I'm so happy because I teach with this goal in mind & it means a lot to accomplish it
.
@BruleRachel
has a fantastic must-read review piece on Women and Power in the Developing World out in Annual Review of Political Science and it is open-access:
last night of the trump regime calls for desi pizza: butter chicken & chili cheese.
and just like that any claim I had to being a New Yorker is forever revoked...
it's my first time teaching my own course. a lot of what I've learnt about "how to teach" was from my first TA assignment in graduate school with Mona El Ghobashy at
@Columbia
who is one of the best teachers I've encountered in all my years of schooling /1
The audacity of offering women advice on how to protect themselves when their entire lives and so many decisions — big and small — involve a mental calculation of how best to manage the ever present threat of verbal emotional physical and sexual violence from men