Monday | 7 October 2024 | Reg No- 06
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Monday | 7 October 2024 | Epaper

In My View

Gowher Rizvi: The man behind the curtain

Published : Friday, 7 October, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 1611
Syed Badiuzzaman
His name is Gowher Rizvi. He is a prominent scholar with international reputation. He has a brilliant academic background with the highest degree from the world's most prestigious educational institution. He also has a lot of teaching experience as well as several publications to his credit that makes him definitely a top-class academic and also a global affairs expert.

Instead of walking back and forth between his office and classrooms on the campus of Oxford or Harvard or any other Ivy League school of America every day, what is this highly talented man doing in the traffic-congested and heavily polluted city of Dhaka abandoning his smooth life and association with other brilliant friends and colleagues in the academic field?

Rizvi responded to the call of his country. So, he has chosen rather his beloved city of Dhaka, Bangladesh over Oxford, England, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Princeton, New Jersey. If he would choose, he would be easily able to work at any of these three world-famous academic places. The Yale University at New Haven, Connecticut would also be happy to welcome him.

But he thought that it was time to give back to his country where he was born 74 years ago. So, he never said no when he received the offer to become the international affairs advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. This is called patriotism --a service to one's own nation. Gowher Rizvi understood it all too well. So, he never hesitated to respond to the call of his country. And he decided to serve his homeland.

Despite being a Bangladeshi by birth and having such an extraordinary resume, still few Bangladeshis know him very well. Honestly speaking even I never heard of him before he became the advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. And even after taking such a big job in Bangladesh government, Rizvi mostly stays out of the spotlight. He is barely seen in the glare of television cameras. So, I decided to feature him in my this week's column for the Daily Observer.

Who is Gowher Rizvi? During the partition of India, Rizvi's ancestors moved from India's Murshidabad to what was then East Pakistan. He spent early part of his student life at Faujdarhat Cadet College. He passed his both BA and MA in the first class from Dhaka University.
With brilliant academic performance at the nation's premier university, Rizvi went to Oxford's Trinity College in 1972 as a Rhodes Scholar and obtained his PhD in history from there. So, Rizvi is also a historian.

Before he became the international affairs advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Rizvi was MacArthur Fellow in International Relations at Oxford University's Nuffield College. He was also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an editor of Contemporary South Asia, a British scholarly journal. He also held various positions at Oxford University, Harvard Kennedy School, the University of Warwick, the University of Canterbury and the University of Virginia.

Gowher Rizvi has an extraordinary career as an academic and expert in global affairs spanning nearly three decades in three continents. With time and advancement through his career, his positions shifted from the academic arena to the international organizations and then to the government of his own homeland. Prior to return to Dhaka in 2009 to begin his new job to advise the prime minister of Bangladesh on international affairs, he was the vice-provost for international programs and professor of global affairs at the University of Virginia.

Earlier he was a lecturer of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and also the director of the Ash Centre for Democratic Governance and Innovation there. Before joining the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, he was the Ford Foundation representative to New Delhi with responsibilities for directing the foundation's activities across South Asia. Rizvi also served as a special assistant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Afghanistan.  

His teaching career began at Oxford as the Alfred Beit junior lecturer and senior associate member in 1976 at St. Antony's College. He taught history at Oxford University's Balliol College from 1979 to 1981. He was MacArthur Scholar and Fellow in politics and international relations at Oxford's Nuffield College from 1988 to 1994. He also worked with the Royal Institute of International Affairs to organize a high-level Anglo-Iranian Roundtable for direct dialogue between the two countries.

Rizvi has also written on a variety of subjects. His major publications include "The State of Access: Success and Failure of Democracies to Create Equal Opportunities" (Brookings Institution Press, Washington DC, 2008), "Democracy & Development: Restoring Social Justice at the Core of Good Governance" (International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, 2008),"South Asia in a Changing International Order" (SAGE, New Delhi, 1993), "Bangladesh: The Struggle for the Restoration of Democracy" (Bangabandhu Society, London, 1985).

All his endeavors have primarily focused on democracy and restoration of rights of marginalized people. Rizvi also has a deep concern for social justice, a profound interest in building institutions and an unwavering commitment to quality education. While heading the operations of the Ford Foundation in South Asia, he shifted the foundation's focus to women and the tribal population who have been historically disadvantaged for decades. A major goal of the new institutions set up by the Ford Foundation under his leadership was to empower these groups.

Now the question is: How is he doing as an international affairs advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina? Most people will certainly give him a passing grade as Bangladesh has been maintaining good relations with almost all countries of the world.  Since Rizvi has joined the government in 2009, Bangladesh's relations have rather significantly improved with many countries around the globe including of course neighboring India. Bangladesh has also managed to maintain a balanced relation with all big powers of the world including the U.S. Russia and China.

But Bangladesh also came under the U.S. sanctions -- for the first time in its 51-year history -- while Gowher Rizvi kept advising Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on international affairs. Some people are curious to know if Rizvi being an expert on international affairs could guess it in advance and alerted the prime minister of Bangladesh accordingly. If he could and did what he was supposed to do, then these people ask couldn't Bangladesh do anything to avert the humiliating U.S. actions? No one has any definitive answer. However, Rizvi may have one.

The world is passing through a complex global politics. Many countries are taking extreme caution to carefully navigate through the current international situation which has made it more complicated.Regardless of what Gowher Rizvi could or couldn't do with regard to U.S. sanctions on Bangladesh, he is a great asset for the country. Bangladesh can bank on him for advice on global affairs.
The writer is a Toronto-based
journalist who also writes for the Toronto Sun as a guest columnist







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