Daily Times

Vanhanen has talked in detail about ethnic nepotism in his book ‘Ethnic conflicts: their biological roots in ethnic nepotism’. An ethnic group acts like a family since its members have common characteristic genes that are derived from same descent. This gives rise to nepotistic feeling about their descent groups so much so that they direct familial-type altruism towards them.

This nepotistic feeling also gives rise to intergroup antagonism. Ethnic diversity is the only way that can guarantee that organisations continue working towards the goals that they aim at achieving. The autonomous government organisations such as universities are one of the most ethnically non-diverse places. A university is a place for providing education, produce knowledge, and a place of social interaction for students and faculty alike. Universities harbour a structure in which social relations between academic faculty, staff, and administration is informally determined by cultural politics privileging some groups and excluding others.

Ethnic diversity should be guaranteed in contractual as well as permanent appointments at the universities — both in teaching and administrative staff members

People like Federal and Provincial Education secretaries, Vice Chancellors and politicians feel nervous talking about race in the workforce out of fear of causing offence. However, this silence of them does affect others as people from marginalised ethnicities that are heavily outnumbered feel that when they walk into the office every day, they couldn’t relate to anybody and no one relates to them. Besides, ethnic nepotism, discrimination is also an issue that needs to be recognised.

The term ‘ethnic nepotism’ describes a human tendency for in-group bias or in-group favouritism applied by nepotism for people with the same ethnicity within a multi-ethnic society. Ethnic nepotism occurs when someone deliberately appoints people who are their kith or kin. This results in the lack of ethnic diversity. The marginalised and heavily outnumbered ethnicities are then left vulnerable to any sort of harassment and intimidation. Some of the left outs either become too submissive and follow all sort of orders – right or wrong – or become too distant. The rest choose the path of flight. Women then have to take the cover of gender bias to protect their own rights.

Interestingly, the constitutions of all Pakistani universities guarantee that no one shall be discriminated against on the basis of cast, creed, ethnicity, sect etc. However, neither the constitution of the country nor that of the universities guarantees diversity in sub-groups such as individual departments. This opens the door for opportunists to profit; thus they easily appoint people from their families, and from own ethnic community belonging to their cities, provinces or villages. This whole process creates a hostile environment where a junior or even a peon/clerk has more value than the seniors because the people in position will rather listen to their self-appointed and favoured kith/kin then listen to others. Universities of Pakistan, that are not even as productive as those of our neighbouring country, can transform if diversity through inclusion is applied by recognising that allteachers, regardless of gender, ethnic background, age or disability, are valuable and arewelcome.

Ethnic diversity should be guaranteed in contractual as well as permanent appointments in the universities both in teaching faculty members as well as non-faculty members. And clear procedures should be outlined to prevent the endangerment of overall ethnic diversity in individual departments at any time. The ethnic diversity minimises conflicts across all cultural and civilizational boundaries in organisations. Ethnic diversity increases the number of talented individuals and strengthen the organisations. No survey is so far conducted to account for ethnic diversity in small groups such as individual departments in various universities of Pakistan.

All over the world, the ethnic diversity especially on all managerial levels are routinely assessed and shared nationally. Routine census of ethnic diversity at manager level (such as Deans, departmental heads etc) in universities across Pakistan is also needed. Much like other countries, these problems have to be recognized by federal and provincial education ministries.

The writer is an Assistant Professor. He can be reached at m.khalid.shaikh@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, September 1^st 2017.