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'Social sciences should be taken seriously'
Karachi, Sep 5: Universities in Pakistan should give more importance to social
sciences, said the Vice Chancellor of the University of Karachi (KU), Prof.
Pirzada Qasim, while delivering his presidential address at the inaugural
session of a two-day conference. Titled the 'Interdisciplinary Social Sciences
International Conference 2007', the conference began at the Arts auditorium of
KU on Tuesday. Prof. Qasim said that while science and technology was important
for the development of the country, social sciences inculcated a sense of
aesthetics in people, which is essential for the existence of a "beautiful
world".
The highlight of the inaugural session was the keynote address
by Dr Ahmed Ali Khan, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge, UK, on "Good
journalism and ethics". The address, which was in the form of a presentation,
was a lacklustre affair, as his advice to journalists lacked depth and was
hardly factual. He said that while truth and accuracy were the important ethical
principles in journalism, they are frequently violated. According to him, it is
the collective responsibility of the society to build a mechanism for good
journalism.
In the plenary session of the conference, Lord Shaukat Nawaz
Khan, a member of the British House of Lords and vice president of the
International Health Foundation, UK, presented his paper on "Adolescence, peer
groups and identity." The second paper in the first plenary session was
presented by Prof. A.R. Skinner of the University of Durham, titled "Cultural
shifts in mental illness".
In the afternoon session Dr Ali Shirazi of
Mashhad University, Iran, presented his paper on the significance of social
sciences which, he feels, is an ignored field of research. He was of the view
that most of the pressing problems in our society are the result of people's
apathy towards social sciences and the failure to conduct research. He called
for indigenous research in all societies. In his paper, Dr Mansoor Akbar Kundi
of the University of Balochistan called for integrated research on political
science to bring about a change in the social set-up. The news
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