Kamal Ahmad (born 1965) is a Bangladesh-born, now U.S. national, educator and social entrepreneur. He led the creation of the Asian University for Women located in Chittagong, Bangladesh in 2006. [1] [2] [3]
Kamal Ahmad (born 1965) is a Bangladesh-born, now U.S. national, educator and social entrepreneur. He led the creation of the Asian University for Women located in Chittagong, Bangladesh in 2006. [1] [2] [3]
Ahmad was born in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to a family of educators.
At age 14, Ahmad established a series of internationally funded afternoon schools for adolescents who served as domestic workers in Dhaka. [4] [5] [6] The first of his schools was set up on the side of an abandoned public road near the campus of the University of Dhaka. The Juvenile Literacy Programme that he started with international funding was possibly the first non-governmental initiative in the area of informal education for children in Bangladesh.
In 1977, as a student of Class Seven at Dhaka's St. Joseph School, Kamal wrote to the Australian High Commissioner protesting the treatment of Australian aborigines, citing in particular the case of the distinguished Aboriginal painter Albert Namatjira. Kamal's protest letter triggered the Australian High Commission to issue an eight-page rebuttal on the matter and he was invited to the Australian High Commission for a meeting to discuss the issues further. No change in Australian policy with respect to its treatment of aborigines was reported.
Ahmad moved to the U.S. in 1980 to attend Phillips Exeter Academy. At Exeter, he led the Third World Society and the Student-Faculty Committee on Corporate Responsibility which focused on the question of corporate divestment from apartheid-era South Africa. Ahmad entered Harvard College in 1983. As a freshman, Ahmad founded and managed the Overseas Development Network, a consortium of 70 university student groups across the United States dedicated to the promotion of international development projects. [7] [8] [9] In 1987, Ahmad won Time magazine's second annual College Achievement Award for "20 of the most outstanding juniors in America." [10]
Ahmad's father was Professor Kamaluddin Ahmad, a famed biochemist who pioneered the study of biochemistry and nutritional sciences in the Indian subcontinent. [11] [12] Professor Ahmad established one of the region's first biochemistry departments at the University of Dhaka in 1957.
Ahmad's grandfather, M.O. Ghani was one of the first Bengali-Indian Muslims to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry from the United Kingdom. He went on to become founder-vice chancellor of Bangladesh Agricultural University in Mymensingh, vice chancellor of the University of Dhaka, Pakistan's Ambassador to Tanzania and other East African countries, and an independent Member of Parliament in Bangladesh. [13]
Following graduation from Harvard College in 1988, Ahmad served on the staffs of the World Bank; Rockefeller Foundation; UNICEF; and the General Counsel of the Asian Development Bank based in Manila, Philippines. In 1993, Ahmad entered University of Michigan Law School.
In 1998, Ahmad conceived and co-directed the World Bank/UNESCO Task Force on Higher Education & Society. [14]
In September 2006, the Parliament of Bangladesh ratified the landmark Charter of the Asian University for Women. The Charter endowed the university with institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and embedded it in the principle of non-discrimination. In 2005 and 2006, the Open Society Foundations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided the start-up funds which enabled AUW to become operational in 2008. [15]
Located in Chittagong, Bangladesh, Asian University for Women (AUW) is the first of its kind—a regional liberal arts university dedicated to the education and leadership development of women drawn from diverse socio-economic backgrounds from across Asia and the Middle East.
AUW is chartered by the Parliament of Bangladesh as an independent international university. To date, over $100 million in private philanthropic support has been contributed to this initiative. In addition, the Government of Bangladesh has granted 140 acres of land for a purpose-designed campus. [16]
At its core, AUW is organized to overcome communal identities and recognize our common human predicament and potential. AUW also promotes a preferential option for educating women who are first in their family to enter university. In founding AUW, Kamal pioneered a number of unconventional approaches to education, including targeted recruitment of women from some of the region's most oppressed and underserved communities, including Rohingya refugees, Bangladeshi textile factory workers, and women from remote highlands and creating a standards rubric that is flexible at entry but uncompromising at exit.
Kamal developed the triad of "Courage, Outrage at Injustice, and Empathy" as key indicators of leadership potential, which has informed the university's search for talent among incoming students. As of 2020, AUW draws students from 18 countries and has spurred a new network of almost one thousand rising women leaders from across the region in its alumnae. Kamal has advocated for the use of performing arts as an instrument for asserting AUW's secularity as well as for community building in a diverse setting.
In August 2021 in the days just ahead of the return of the Taliban in Kabul, Kamal led a complex but ultimately successful effort to evacuate AUW's students and alumni out of Afghanistan. The evacuation was originally planned for Bangladesh. Alas, as in those last hours no civilian aircraft was allowed to land in Kabul, the students boarded a US military aircraft which ultimately brought them to the United States where they were placed with full scholarship across a range of US universities for continuing their higher education. Dozens of pro bono lawyers were mobilized to help the students seek asylum in the United States. As doors to girls' and women's education shuttered in Afghanistan closed, Kamal returned to Kabul in a bid to restart the recruitment of Afghan students to join AUW. AUW has committed to help sustain a "Brain Bank" of Afghan women and to this end have committed to provide education to at least one thousand Afghan women. Almost five hundred Afghan students are already at AUW while more are expected to join in the months ahead.
Ahmad is a recipient of a number of awards including the United Nations Gold Peace Medal & Citation Scroll, given by the Paul G. Hoffman Awards Fund for "outstanding contribution to national and international development." [8] In 2002, Ahmad was elected as a "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum. Ahmad was also given the John Phillips Award from Phillips Exeter Academy, his alma mater. The award is given to "an alumnus or alumna of the academy, still living at the time of nomination, whose life demonstrates John Phillips' ideal of goodness and knowledge united in noble character and usefulness to mankind. [17] It is the highest honor accorded by the academy to an alumnus.
Kamal serves on a number of not-for-profit boards including the Board of Trustees of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Leadership Board of the Beth Israel Lahey Hospitals at Harvard University. He is a member of the Council of Luminaries of the Yidan Foundation created by one of the founders of the Chinese internet company Tencent.
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying 652,864 square kilometers (252,072 sq mi) of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country's largest city and serves as its capital. According to the World Population review, as of 2023, Afghanistan's population is 43 million. The National Statistics Information Authority of Afghanistan estimated the population to be 32.9 million as of 2020.
Ahmad Shah Massoud was an Afghan military leader and politician. He was a guerrilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation during the Soviet–Afghan War from 1979 to 1989. In the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias; after the Taliban takeover, he was the leading opposition commander against their regime until his assassination in 2001.
The Taliban, which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is an Afghan militant movement with an ideology comprising elements of Pashtun nationalism and the Deobandi current of Islamic fundamentalism. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996 to 2001, before being overthrown following the American invasion. It recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 following the departure of most coalition forces, after nearly 20 years of insurgency, and currently controls all of the country. Its government is not recognized by any country. The Taliban government has been internationally condemned for restricting human rights in Afghanistan, including the right of women and girls to work and to have an education.
Kandahār is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the southern part of the country, sharing a border with Pakistan, to the south. It is surrounded by Helmand in the west, Uruzgan in the north and Zabul Province in the east. Its capital is the city of Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, which is located on the Arghandab River. The greater region surrounding the province is called Loy Kandahar. The Emir of Afghanistan sends orders to Kabul from Kandahar making it the de facto capital of Afghanistan, although the main government body operates in Kabul. All meetings with the Emir take place in Kandahar, meetings excluding the Emir are in Kabul.
Kabul University is one of the major and oldest institutions of higher education in Afghanistan. It is in the 3rd District of the capital Kabul, near the Ministry of Higher Education. It was founded in 1931 by King Mohammed Nadir Shah, whose prime minister at the time was his younger brother, Sardar Mohammad Hashim Khan.
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, was a military alliance of groups that operated between early 1992 and 2001 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. At that time, many non-Pashtun Northerners originally with the Republic of Afghanistan led by Mohammad Najibullah became disaffected with Pashtun Khalqist Afghan Army officers holding control over non-Pashtun militias in the North. Defectors such as Rashid Dostum and Abdul Momim allied with Ahmad Shah Massoud and Ali Mazari forming the Northern Alliance. The alliance's capture of Mazar-i-Sharif and more importantly the supplies kept there crippled the Afghan military and began the end of Najibullah's government. Following the collapse of Najibullah's government the Alliance would fall with a Second Civil War breaking out however following the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's (Taliban) takeover of Kabul, The United Front was reassembled.
Education in Afghanistan includes K–12 and higher education, which is under the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education. In 2021, there were nearly 10 million students and 220,000 teachers in Afghanistan. The nation still requires more schools and teachers. Soon after the Taliban take took the country in August 2021, they banned girls from secondary education. Some provinces still allow secondary education for girls despite the ban. In December 2022, the Taliban government also prohibited university education for females in Afghanistan, sparking protests and international condemnation. In December 2023, investigations were being held by the United Nations into the claim that Afghan girls of all ages were allowed to study at religious schools.
The American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) was a private university located in the Darulaman section of Kabul. Former students of AUAF live abroad and, as of 2022, there are plans to create a new AUAF campus in Qatar. AUAF was the country's first private, not-for-profit institution of higher education and was located in Kabul near the Darul Aman Palace and the Afghan Parliament.
Asian University for Women (AUW) is an independent, international university in Chittagong, Bangladesh. AUW admits students solely on the basis of merit, regardless of their family's income level. Currently, 85% of AUW students are on scholarship support with many being the first in their family to attend a university. AUW offers two pre-collegiate bridge programs called Access Academy and Pathways for Promise, as well as a three-year undergraduate program based on the liberal arts and sciences. As of 2023, AUW has around 1300 students enrolled from over 35 ethnicities across Asia and the Middle East.
Afghanistan–Bangladesh relations refer to the bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Both countries are members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
John William "Mick" Nicholson Jr. is a retired United States Army four-star general who last commanded U.S. Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A) and the 41-nation NATO-led Resolute Support Mission from March 2, 2016, to September 2, 2018, succeeding General John F. Campbell. He was the longest-serving commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan until 2021, having been the senior officer in theatre for 2 years, 6 months. He was previously commanding general, Allied Land Command from October 2014 and commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. Nicholson is the son of John W. "Jack" Nicholson, also a retired general officer in the United States Army, and is distantly related to British brigadier general John Nicholson.
Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, also spelled Haibatullah Akhunzada, is an Afghan Deobandi cleric who is the supreme leader of Afghanistan in the internationally unrecognized Taliban regime. He has led the Taliban since 2016, and came to power with its victory over U.S.-backed forces in the 2001–2021 war. A highly reclusive figure, he has almost no digital footprint except for an unverified photograph and several audio recordings of speeches.
On 24 August 2016, attackers who are suspected members of the Taliban stormed the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, Afghanistan, using a car bomb and automatic weapons. Thirteen people were killed, including seven university students, one policeman, three security guards at the university, a university professor (Naqib Ahmad Khpulwak) & Faculty of Computer Science (Omer Farooq Hazarbuz) was badly injured. Fifty to at least 53 people were injured, some critically. Three of the attackers were killed by Afghan Special Forces. This was the first direct attack on the university, although two professors were kidnapped just outside the university a few weeks earlier.
Govt. Madrasah-e-Alia is a government madrasa located in Bakshibazar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Since its founding the madrasah has been playing a significant role in imparting and spreading Islamic education and ideology that is conservative, methodical, modern and progressive.
Events in the year 2022 in Afghanistan.
Asila Wardak is an Afghan human rights activist, women's activist, former diplomat, and the first Afghan woman elected as a member to the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation's Independent Human Rights Commission. Wardak is one of the co-founder of the Afghan Women's Network. She served as Minister Counselor at the Afghanistan Mission to the United Nations. She also worked as the head of the human rights issue for Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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