Professor Interview

I was born and raised in Bangladesh, and I completed my undergraduate and master's degree in Sociology at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. I also did a second master's degree at Queen's University in Canada, after 15 years from my first master's degree. Then I completed my PhD degree at McGill University. 

Here [at UC Berkeley], I teach in the Interdisciplinary Studies program. Mainly, we allow our students to choose their own subjects or courses, and the main focus is the research project that the students design. We help them design the research program so that they can collect data and use theoretical understanding to analyze the topic. I also teach Health and Development—now it has become Health, Wealth, Love and Happiness. And I teach courses like Interdisciplinary Research Methods, ISF 190 which is the senior thesis research project, and Introduction to Social Theory and Cultural Analysis. Sometimes I offer other courses like Human rights and Globalization and Climate Change from an interdisciplinary perspective, and Quantitative Research Methods—a separate course from the Introduction to Social Research Methods.

After receiving my master's degree, I started my career as a high school teacher, and I used to teach geography and mathematics. This was not related to my main interest in sociology—I became interested in sociology because of my mother.

My parents studied Islamic history and culture—sociology was a mandatory course. I read the sociology textbooks from my mother's collection, and I increasingly became interested in sociology, purely because of how interesting social theory is. I was also interested in philosophy. So, that shaped my initial interest when I was like an eighth grader student in high school. 

After that, my parents wanted me to become either an engineer or a doctor based on the cultural expectation. I was not interested in engineering or in medical science—in Bangladesh, in university, the choice was either you go to natural science [or social science]. There was a selection criteria as well as a test. So I wrote both tests for natural science and social science, and I was selected in both areas. When I told the professors there in Dhaka University that I chose social science—sociology—they were very angry with me. They said, "Are you a fool? You have got an admission in microbiology!" At that time, microbiology was a new subject. Today, I understand that microbiology is very important for the job market—many of my friends earn much more than I do. But since I was interested in and preferred sociology, my parents were also very angry. I got support from my elder brother. My elder brother said that sociology is a good subject—if you're interested, you'll do good. And I did very well in sociology.

Later, after my high school teaching, I worked in a World Bank-supported program on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh. I worked there for about a year, and then I switched to UNICEF—United Nations Children's Fund in Bangladesh. Then, my parents realized that even sociology is a good discipline, and sociology helped me to be the Education Officer in UNICEF. That was a very important position. I was part of the team responsible for implementing a $34 million project in Bangladesh to offer [early childhood] education to 3-5 years old and also child care facilities for working parents. That was mainly focused on those who are deprived, like the communities working in the tea gardens or in the slum area and so on. So that was a huge project—first time in Bangladesh—and I was also involved in writing the policy document on pre-primary education. There was a primary education policy, but we introduced the pre-primary [education policy]. Before going to primary school, children aged zero to five—we focused first on three to five, but later we included everyone up to five years old—learn things, not just, say, literacy or numeracy. Literacy, numeracy are part of it, but we focused on learning motor skills, because they are very young children, and also helping them develop their social skills—not just the academic skills, but also how to socialize with other children.

After that, I was frustrated with the development of this project, because I saw that much of the budget was going towards remuneration, paying the NGOs who were part of the implementation, and also the government officials. There were many orientation meetings, conferences, and we were using a lot of money from the project to fund all these activities which were important, but our portion of the fund was a major portion that was going toward those activities, and I had a different idea. I suggested that we could do it in a better way. But my idea was not welcomed, because UNICEF is very much a top-down organization. I joined UNICEF in June, 1999 and it was around 2008 when I quit UNICEF. I resigned and I wanted to learn more about developments like the main hurdles on the way to development, and the problems facing the developing world in their education and other sectors. 

To research on these issues, I applied to Queen's University for the PhD program, but I was accepted for the master's program. [In the master’s program,] I studied political movements—the armed movements in Bangladesh, because at that time, it was a major problem the country faced. There was no political stability, and that greatly hampered development projects. So I focused first on armed movements in Bangladesh. I wrote a book on this when I was studying at Queen’s University. 

My research topic [for the previous master’s degree at Dhaka University] was inequality that is reflected in cemeteries. I always thought about a different project for my research. What I did was to explain how the whole idea of burial custom was related to urban development, the environment, city planning and so on. So I wrote a paper on graveyards and urbanization, and I argued that we talk a lot about the housing crisis for the living people, but the dead are also suffering from the crisis. The living has a housing crisis because cities are crowded places, but we still need a place for burying the dead. And when you do not have enough space for the burial, how may that affect city development? I provided empirical evidence that if you don't care about it, you let people bury the dead in their private graveyard. Some families maintain their own graveyard. I classified graveyards into eight types, and that classification was used in other research afterwards, so they cited me as an expert in that area. I created the first category of cemeteries. In the private graveyard, when the bodies decompose they can pollute the soil, and mix with local water resources, and that can also create and spread diseases. 

Those ideas were in my first master's degree, and later, many studies happen even in the US following my model. So there was a paper in the US about the mass burial ground. It exists everywhere, even on campus. Do you know that in this campus there are mass burial grounds? Those are for the indigenous people. There was a residential school system—they forcefully brought children to doctrine, indoctrinated them in Christianity or in the Western culture. Those people rejected, they resisted, and then later those children were killed and buried in a mass burial ground. So what is the implication of this?—that was the idea in my paper.

For my PhD that I completed in 2015—and received in 2016 at McGill University—it was on corruption in governance. I argued that good governance is lacking in the developing world's development planning, and much of the fund is wasted in corruption. From my experience in UNICEF, I talked about how corruption can derail development projects. Those projects are very important for the development of society, but when much of it goes to funding meetings, travels, and other expenses, then you cannot achieve the goal. That was the topic for my PhD research—governance for development in the Global South. I am still dealing with it in sociology.

As I said, much of the things are related to the market. The market  determines whether your degree will sell and your skills will be important. So my solution is, choose your field of study and also develop your skill set based on the market demand. But the market is rapidly changing. Let's say it takes about four years to complete your undergraduate education—by that time, the demand of the market could be a completely different thing. There is a huge level of uncertainty in today's society, not just in the US, but overall in Europe and other areas as well. And this is partly because the whole world is in conflict, so that affects the market. So my suggestion would be, first know your market, know that it is affected by other factors, like global conflict and global economy. Otherwise, you will not be properly prepared for the situation. Sociologist C. Wright Mills established sociological imagination—we should have a sociological imagination about how our life is affected by the overall social context. So our life is not, indeed, in our own control. We are shaped by a lot of other forces, and if you're conscious about those forces, informed about those courses, you're better prepared so you can quickly change the course. So these skills are very important today.

I joined UC Berkeley in July 2017. So seven years now, and I have published a lot of papers. I completed my research projects within this time. And also, just today, I published in the education sector, primary education sector in Bangladesh, and that is an action research project—we are helping Bangladesh to retain students. Many students dropout from high school, so we designed a multi-faceted program to retain students so that they don't drop out. First we identify the causes of dropout and then try to address those causes so that students remain in the education system. So that is like our impact on the real world. 

We're not just an academician—we write papers, but we also want to see the impact of our research or our projects in real life. I'm especially happy to help my country first. 

I can also work in developing countries as well, but I want to engage the students in research, and you will be happy to know that I jointly published with my students. I encourage my students to select their research topic, and then we collaborate to collect data for analysis, and write the paper. So I want to do more of this kind of work in the next two or five years. I would be happy to start a big project, but the whole process is very complicated, and it takes a lot of time to write the grant proposal and so on. So maybe in the next five-year duration, I can think of something like a big project that I can work with, and of course, I want to engage my students in the project.

Marx, you can say, is my icon, for different reasons. Karl Marx talks about this conflict perspective—everything in our society is determined by historical mechanisms, and it has a material basis. Marx is a materialist, and he believed that first, we need to eat, drink and have shelter, and then we can think about literature, art, music and so on. That means the hard reality of our life is those material factors, and we may be so concerned today about more superficial differences. Let's say whether our gender is one or another, whether our race is one or another, these are very superficial differences. The hard reality is that everyone has to work to continue living, otherwise they cannot survive in society. That understanding is very important, it will fundamentally change your worldview. 

So for that reason, Marx is very motivating, because it helps me to understand the material basis of everything that is happening. Otherwise it is just like, say, a clash of civilizations, a clash of ideologies. That is not the case, and if you look at Marx's idea about knowledge or about consciousness, Marx believed that human beings are creative, human beings are conscious. But this consciousness is very different from the consciousness of other species. Other species are conscious so that, let's say, if you go near them, they will run away from you, but human consciousness is very different. It is said that human beings are conscious about their consciousness. Only human beings know that they can know. You cannot but know, you cannot stop knowing, okay? That's a very interesting definition of knowledge. And the basis of knowledge is again, your experience, your hard experience. And from your experience, you know that it’s the most authentic knowledge. 

In my case, I apply this concept of authentic knowledge with my ethnic background. I came from a very different social, cultural situation, right? So I have experience living in those countries or communities. That is more authentic to me, and I can then also teach my students about those countries—where I work or where I was raised. And the interesting thing here is that the students believe this is authentic, because I’ve lived there. But if someone is talking about the Middle East, and has never gone to the Middle East, never had any idea about the Middle East, people don't believe that. So it is very important that we have more concrete experience about a situation, and then we talk about it—this knowledge is more authentic. This comes from Marx's theory that with your experience, you gain authentic knowledge.

I like gardening, and I also have a lot of aquariums and fish. I also like to write poetry and short stories. I published them—I have a book of a collection of my works. I don't teach literature, but I'm interested in literature. I like to read a lot of stories and branches of literature and philosophy.

I believe in making your hands dirty. There's also a Marxist teaching that without making your hands dirty, you cannot have your experiences, so you have to do it, right? 

What I want to do is say “I tried” in my own life—I raised chicken, for example, and those chickens gave me eggs. And I taught my children how it takes time to raise the chicken and get the eggs—the whole natural process of getting your food, and also your connection with nature and so on. I like to do more of these kinds of things outside of my academic life, to teach my children, but also for my own experience. So like say, I have diabetes, and I cannot go or am not interested in going to a gym and doing physical exercise to keep my body fit. But I found that it is more fruitful to do it through your work. I bought a house in Canada, with a 12,000 square feet lot, so I have a lot of land, and I started gardening. Then I saw that, within three months, I was in good shape. I was working on the land, I was cultivating the land. And I was making my hands dirty. The benefit of this is that you not only learn about how to do all these things, but also it helps your body. I suddenly had a controlled diabetes level—my sugar level, everything, was controlled, and I was feeling very well. 

When I am here, I sometimes go to visit my home in Canada. My elder son is there because he could not come to UC Berkeley—I would have to pay $56,000 per year for his education. So I sent him to Canada, because he was raised in that community. He has friends, and he's now doing a master’s in electrical engineering. He is always on the Dean's merit list. He loves this community, and it's reflected in his work. 

So you can see the financial theory—if you love to do something, okay, that will both keep you mentally and physically healthy. But in this society, this is very, very difficult. As I said, I love gardening, but how do I get a piece of land to do this? And here, if I have to worry so much about the education expenses of my kids, and cannot send them to a good school because it costs a lot, it affects my mental health.