Shamsad Mortuza

BLOWIN' IN THE WIND

Dr Shamsad Mortuza is a professor of English at Dhaka University, and former pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB).

We cannot let violence silence our daughters

What is perhaps more insidious than the acts themselves is the language that now surrounds them. The lexicon of liberation has deliberately opted for expletives.

2d ago

Understanding the university ranking mismatch

We need to change our mindset and up our game to improve our universities’ standing.

2w ago

When leisure turns lethal

The alarming number of deaths gives Cox’s Bazar bad press.

3w ago

Rising crime, institutional failure, and the bystander effect

The collective numbness contradicts the spirit with which the masses stormed the streets in July last year.

1m ago

In search of a vice-chancellor

Central to the formation of the panel is the objective of minimising political interference in the selection of top university managers.

1m ago

JnU crisis exposes the rot in our higher education system

Central to the JnU crisis is a list of broken promises.

1m ago

We need more than air purifiers to clean up Dhaka’s air

It’s easy to dismiss Dhaka as an unliveable city. The challenge is to replace that tantrum with the determination to make the city better.

1m ago

The crisis of a fossilised education system

It will be a crime to miss the post-uprising zeitgeist and not to overhaul our educational sector.

2m ago
May 23, 2020
May 23, 2020

From blackboard to black mirror: Making teaching great again

Online teaching, at its best, can create a learning environment to ensure transference of knowledge. However, I am not sure if technology and innovations have reached that point to replace the tribal needs of human interactions that define the complex teacher-student relationship in a physical classroom.

May 16, 2020
May 16, 2020

Herd mentality vs herd immunity

Remember getting caught by your parents for trying out roadside pickles or tawdry coloured crunchy ice outside your school?

May 9, 2020
May 9, 2020

Crossing the public-private divide

I was a young lecturer when private universities appeared for the first time in the higher education scene of Bangladesh. I remember when one of my colleagues left us to join a pioneer private university as a full time faculty, we at the department felt that he had sold his soul to money, deciding to work under a corporate system. The same thing happened when one of my teachers left for a financially lucrative BCS job.

May 3, 2020
May 3, 2020

The ‘Extraction’ Attraction

My Face-book newsfeed has been experiencing a little tremor ever since the Dhaka-based action movie Extraction started streaming on Netflix on April 24.

April 25, 2020
April 25, 2020

Covid-19 Is No Leveller

The horrific images of white plastic body bags in which the final journeys are set during this great pandemic add to the myth of coronavirus as the great leveller.

April 18, 2020
April 18, 2020

The masked heroes in Covid’s metamorphoses

My generation grew up with masked heroes. They could shoot heat beams from their eyes or knock down a skyscraper with a single punch—“kavoom”! They could lead double lives: during the day they could be aristocratic noblemen or dashing socialites, and at night, they could put on their vigilante masks and raid the neighbourhood in search of culprits and criminals.

April 11, 2020
April 11, 2020

Ice Age: Corona Consequence

How will the world look like once this not-so-coveted Covid-19 crisis is over? Is this pandemic a virus-driven Ice Age that will change the world the way we know it? Can we ever go back to being normal? Or are we going to have “the new normal”?

April 4, 2020
April 4, 2020

Be My Quarantine: Some random thoughts on Covid-19 isolation

Too little money, too much screen time, and uneven distribution of household chores and childcare—a recipe made in hell.

March 28, 2020
March 28, 2020

Against all odds

Any bored individual who has nothing better to do than to read the comment threads while listening to some old songs on YouTube must have come across these two ideas: “Who is listening to this in 2020?” Or “So-and-so brought me here”.

March 21, 2020
March 21, 2020

Emergency preparedness in the education sector

The closures of academic institutions for two weeks in response to the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the globe have caught many of us involved in the academia by surprise.