IRS to establish two endowed chairs

Islamabad: Dr Rukhsana Qamber, President of Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) has announced to establish two endowed chairs at the Institute.

Dr Qamber was speaking at Roundup Roundtable held after two-day International Conference on ‘Fake news and facts in our region’ organised by IRS here at Islamabad Club. The roundup started with one-minute silence for the victims of terrorism in Sri Lanka.

Prof Rukhsana briefed the audience about recent achievements of IRS including rejuvenation of the quarterly Regional Studies, and translations into Urdu of its abstracts, establishment at IRS of Dr Yahya Hans Frey endowed Chair in collaboration with Council of Social Sciences, with seed money and establishment of endowed Chair in the name of IRS founder late Lt Gen AI Akram, courtesy and monetary pledge by Hassan Akram and Major General (r) Masood Akram. She said that IRS in collaboration with American Institute of Pakistan Studies and US Embassy held a 3-day fully funded Workshop in Islamabad and then in Lahore on “Countering Human Trafficking in South Asia” in 2018 and undertook another similar collaboration for a one day workshop “Media Matters: Responsible News” in Islamabad, to be repeated next week in Karachi.

The Roundup Roundtable then gathered comments from the conference participants for the five academic sessions to be incorporated in the book form. Later, Atufa Qazi from AIPS and Monica Davis from Public Affairs Department of the US Embassy apprised the audience about the workshop “Media matters: responsible news.” Jill Filipovic, an international journalist, led the interactive workshop. She encouraged the 20 workshop participants from across northern Pakistan by saying that media literacy is what everyone is hungry for. She guided them to recognise that well trained journalists want people to be able to read and assess news.

Participants pointed out that foreign correspondents have tremendous contact with people in power, as opposed to local journalists which puts tremendous responsibility on them to report stories that locals might not be able to. The participants also took part in various activities that would help illustrate the power of responsible news reporting. For this purpose, it is important that a journalist does not just state facts but tell stories. If journalists want issues to resonate with their readers, they need to humanise their reporting. Dr. Qamber awarded certificates to the participants in the end.