The Centre for Public Policy and Governance (CPPG)

cordially invites you to a Seminar on

“Terrorism, Education and Development”

onThursday, November 3, 2016 at 4 pm

Venue: Rt. Rev. Alexander John Malik Public Policy seminar room E-002

Guest Speaker – Dr. Ummad Mazhar – Associate Professor – Department of Economics FCCU

Abstract

Even if for distinct reasons, both the human development paradigm and the neoclassical economics assign fundamental import to human capital formation in social progress. In the former, education creates human capabilities that expand the freedom of choice at an individual level. In the later, education serves as a basic input into the process of productivity enhancing innovations, research and development. Both the paradigms predict close correlation between the rate of growth of human development and socio-economic conditions in the long term. In this context, I explore the possible motives of terrorists in targeting educational institutes. Besides short term gains like greater media attention, social and political unrest, the strategy may aim at decelerating the process of human capital formation especially when one cannot deny the overarching goal of terrorists’ organizations to conquer the society ideologically. In the short term, the attacks on educational institutes serve terrorists to convince the public of the righteousness of their ideology. Destroying educational institutes and increasing the risk of attending them, terrorist organizations can stifle the creation of human capabilities, impede the learning process, and deteriorate the efficiency of educational institutes.  Do these theory-consistent links between development, education, and terrorism exist in actual world? This question is approached in three ways using observational data sets. First, using national level data from 2002 to 2014 on all terrorist incidents in Pakistan, I draw a comparison between educational attacks with the rest of terrorists’ attacks. Second, it uses provincial level data from Pakistan to explore the link between educational attacks and decentralized socio-economic expenditures to see whether attacks on education deter new private investment in this sector. Finally, I examine panel data of twenty non-OECD countries over 2002 to 2014 to identify the impact of terrorist attacks on educational institutes on human capital formation.