Faculty Friday: Adil Najam
Faculty Friday is a series highlighting members of the Initiative on Cities (IOC) Faculty Advisory Board by exploring their work on campus and in the city. This week, we are highlighting Adil Najam, Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of International Relations and Earth and Environment. Professor Najam stepped down as dean and concluded his tenure with the IOC Faculty Advisory Board at the end of the 2021–2022 Academic Year.
Diya Ashtakala: Tell me about yourself and what you are currently working on.
Adil Najam: My work spans a bunch of areas, the core of it is climate change and development. The mainstream of my work pertains to cities. I was the lead author for the UN Development Report on Youth in Pakistan and that confronts the idea of cities which are important to a whole number of development issues. My PhD was at the Department of Urban Studies at MIT and while it focused on environmental policy, it was within the milieu of urban. So those are the directions from which I look at cities broadly and what is happening to cities around the world. My own interest and focus of my research is particularly on what urban means in highly dense and populated developing countries.
What are the challenges cities face?
I don’t think cities face any challenges; we [people] face challenges. Cities are physical artifacts that humans make assuming that they will serve certain purposes for us. That’s what the challenge is. We forget what the purpose of the city is. Cities give us space, size, diversity, innovation, and ideas because lots of people congregate there, there is a milieu. There is this narrow, erroneous idea that cities are only for the people who live there. As living organisms, cities serve the purposes of societies. What is extremely important and usually lost, is that cities are dependent on those that are not cities. My food doesn’t come from the city, my climate does not come totally from the city. The people who live in the city do not come totally from the city and that idea of co dependency is extremely important. Great music comes from the cities, but you can listen to it from the suburbs. Innovation can come from cities, but you can use it in the rural areas. I think it has been a major mistake to think of urban-rural in the tribal fashion. I understand what that means at one level but to me the greatest challenge is to be able to understand cities as a part of a greater fabric of society and to allow them to sustain, maintain and thrive in ways that are beneficial for society.
What roles do students play in cities?
A student is a student, and then a student is a citizen, and this goes back to my notion of connections. The idea of students as citizens is an important one. Many students here at Boston University live off the benefits of a city. We who live in the city, including students, live off those benefits and you start to gain by understanding the great resource that is given to us by virtue of being in a city. You are living off of being in a city that provides you with major teams of sports, a great symphony orchestra, connection, diversity, vitality, infrastructure and innovation and that recognition is the first thing. Second is students as knowledge creators. The notion of what a student is not just someone who is getting information but helps to create knowledge and therefore, a better understanding of their surroundings. A third role is students as users of cities, especially in urban environments such as our own, and that recognition that how great a value has been bestowed upon us by being in a vibrant environment like the city.
If you were the Mayor of Boston and had unlimited resources, what program or project would you pursue and why?
I don’t want to be Mayor of Boston; I like being a Professor! If I could implant an idea, I wouldn’t require resources, money is not the issue. I think ideas are what cause change, not money. I would implant an idea in Boston and in another city of how embedded it is with that which is not a city. I would draw those connections and try to educate myself and others into not just thinking parochially about the boundaries, but how much the city contributes to the rest of the world, the world contributes to the city, and how intertwined Boston is in the world. Thinking of cities as bubbles I think is dangerous and I see that in multiple things, whether it is in carbon emissions, or this idea that I will take my city and somehow there is this invisible boundary where everything ends, well that’s really not true. Just sit on that boundary and count the trucks that go in and out and the ideas that come in and go out. The world is like an orchestra. The great cities of the world may be like this grand piano or the tuba or this big instrument, but you take out all the other music, and you are left with something much less.
What do you love about Boston and what is your favorite city?
I love Boston most of all because it reminds me of Lahore, which I love even more. It reminds me of a city that I have a very deep visceral affection for. It’s a city that is comfortable with itself, its surroundings and what I love about it is that I don’t know where it ends. I think that comfort with itself is a force and is a power. I love the park within it, many great cities have that. I love the pride that people in Boston have about where they live. I love the fact that Boston is comfortable with itself, and more than that it is comfortable with its surroundings and with the world, that’s what makes real cosmopolitans.
There is a saying in my language “Lahore Lahore Aye” which means “Lahore is Lahore.” It is not a statement of arrogance; it is a statement of connection. I think that both cities are the same. The cities I love are cities that are made by repeated interaction with the outside. Cities that bring a congregation of folks from everywhere, that gives them their vitality. Cities that are open give them that vitality, and that’s true for both.