An Open Letter from the Students and People of Pakistan

Bismillah Ar Rahman-e-Rahim (In the name of Allah, The beneficent, the merciful) Asalamalaikum,
It is with deep regret that Pakistanis all around the world have come to learn about the State of Emergency imposed by General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan on November 3rd 2007.

The suspension of the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the arrest of key opposition leaders and lawyers, the suspension of Independent television channels and the imposition of an illegal Provisional Constitutional Order amongst various other actions carried out by Musharraf in the last 48 hours, are a crime against the human rights and civil liberties of Pakistani Citizens. Musharraf is trying to make a joke out of our Constitution and our Country. W e the Students of Pakistan condemn this State of Emergency that has been forced upon the nation. We call for free, democratic, transparent elections and demand that General Pervez Musharraf should stand down as the Head of State.

We stand firm in our commitment against Corruption and condemn any act of violence that puts the lives of innocent civilians at risk. We condemn all bombings, and in particular suicide bombings. The majority of Pakistan is a peaceful, friendly, vibrant nation and we will not let the actions of a few tarnish the name and image of our beloved Nation and our People.
In relation to this letter, we the Students and People of Pakistan do not support any given political party, but we are united to ensure that all legal Political Parties and activists and Pakistani Citizens are given their full democratic rights.
We request all Pakistani Students and Supporters of Democracy, Civil Liberties and Human Rights, to Unite and raise their voice against this injustice and support our views.

Pakistan Zindabad!

Cambridge University Pakistan Society 2007-08

A department outraged

As a member of that proud and tight-knit department known as the ASNaCs I was outraged, as I know the entire department has been outraged, at the grossly misrepresentative descriptions of our subject published in your
newspaper recently. In case you’ve forgotten, I quote - ‘Asnac seems not so much to be scraping the barrel of public regard as licking the underside of it, trying to get back in.’ ‘Every subject is valuable in its own special way... except Asnac.’
Now we are cheerful people and can take a joke as well as anyone else, but this level of mud-slinging goes beyond poking us for liking Vikings onto a whole new, highly offensive level.

Using tables drawn from a su rvey on what students value, your writer clearly implies that these rankings are measures of the actual worth of a subject. It should be obvious to anyone that the value placed on something by a certain group of people and its inherent actual worth are not the same
thing. Asnac is placed below English, History, and Modern and Mediaeval Languages in both vocational and academic columns - despite the fact that Asnac incorporates this same study of literature, history and modern and mediaeval languages all in the same Tripos.

If the transferable skills of these supposedly more respectable subjects are well known, how does it follow that a subject which incorporates all the transferable skills from each of these humanities is presented as worth so little? In addition to this, Asnac offers Palaeography (the study of ancient writings) demanding a high level of analytic and observational skill, and at a postgraduate level involving scientific disciplines in conservation work on manuscripts.

In my opinion, far from rejecting Asnac as ‘weird,’ it is a subject to be respected: in their choice of degree, students of Asnac show that they haven’t simply picked English or History as a bog-standard Humanities subject that has a respectable reputation. Instead they have gone out on a limb, stuck to what they enjoy and taken a lot out of it, even in the face of the ridicule and discrimination that they may suffer from their fellow-students and indeed your newspaper.

Elisabeth Kershaw, Queens’ College

A sarcastic condemnation

It was heart-warming to see how perceptive we Cambridge students are when it comes to most valued vs. least valued subjects. No wonder we lead the pack when we rank Medicine, Law and Engineering at the top and
Theology and Oriental Studies at the bottom. Because we all know that doctors, lawyers a nd engineers are much more important than say, people who study religion or things ‘oriental.’

Yes indeed, as you noted, we seem to be a bit ‘oblivious to or in denial of the huge economic power of East Asia.’ Not to mention that other rising economic powerhouse in South Asia, a little country called India. But why worry about understanding them, their history, their culture, etc.? After all, they all speak English, don’t they? And if they don’t, tough luck, since we’re not likely to be learning Hindi here at Cambridge, thanks to a little ‘restructuring’ by the University administration of the Faculty of Oriental - I mean, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Oh, and there’s this other little matter that just doesn’t seem to go away. Something to do with Islam, isn’t it? All sorts of people who speak Arabic, Persian and who knows what other languages. Obviously studying those languages or anything to do with theology or religion in order to understand how they think and perhaps to think ourselv es a little bit before we launch into major foreign policy fiascoes is of minimal value next to being, say, a doctor, lawyer or engineer. And obviously of questionable academic merit, all that studying other languages totally unrelated to English, French, German, etc., with their funny alphabets and strange sounds. Much more academic to work in one’s own language, isn’t it?
Oh, and I’ve also heard that being a theologian or an orientalist doesn’t pay very well either. Yes, definitely worth putting at the bottom of the list. We are a bright lot, aren’t we?

Mark Dickens , Clare Hall

An irritating truthThe last thing I am going to do is defend the lazy pseudo-journalism in Varsity last week (A Very Subjective Perspective, November 2), but within that there is an undeniable truth that when ignored simply misses the point.
The worst thi ng is that those who are most vocal about their misinterpretation of the article are also missing a chance. Those voices belong to the students of the subjects ranked by the rest of us as unacademic and vocationally irrelevant.
Yet the truth that Varsity merely revealed on paper is that most Cambridge students know bugger all about other people’s subjects and foster a sense of charmingly geeky arrogance to excuse their ignorance. So, whining voices, when someone next asks you “What’s the point in ASNaC?” or “History of Art? That’s like painting and stuff, right?” be thankful to Varsity for showing that it’s the world that is stupid, not your subject.

Calum Davey, Clare College

‘Calling’ for Intellectual and Vocational Freedom

It strikes me that the many of respondents to your subjects survey (‘A very subjective perspective’) are unclear on the definition of “vocation”. Perhaps if they had one of those useless Classics degrees (as I do) they would have known that its closest Anglo-Saxon synonym (whoops, I have a degree in ASNaC too- how have I not yet imploded from the burden of my own worthlessness?!) is “a calling”. Vocation is from the Latin ‘voco, vocare’, to call, and its English derivation is technically meant to apply to an innate desire to follow a certain path in life, traditionally the clergy, medicine or law- I say “traditionally” because these were about the only occupations that had been invented until the Industrial Revolution.

Nowadays people can feel this calling for all sorts of things: veterinary science, philosophy, automotive mechanics, X-Factor contestant. Say what you will about that last option, but to state that certain courses of study at Cambridge are of lesser absolute value than others career-wise is not merely snobbish but ignorant as well. This ignorance is not entirely the students’ fault, as it is indeed handed down by CU Career Services; on saying I was interested in museum work, I was inf ormed I should become an accountant. Eh? Last time I checked, Museum Curator was a job, and for me it is a vocation.
Heaven forfend that someone with a keen love of learning come to Cambridge (one of the top ranked universities in the world, need I remind anyone) and expect to find intellectual freedom. Apparently we are all meant to bow to social pressure and study one of the Varsity-reading-student-approved courses, and then move on to a career that either earns gobs of money in an office or involves lab work, with all other options deemed beneath contempt.

Susan Buhr
Formerly of the Faculty of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic