In 2010, the House of Habib formed the Habib University Foundation. The project was launched with a grant of US$40 million. Construction on the campus in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Karachi began in 2012. The university has a joint venture contract with Texas A&M University at Qatar and is collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University, United States for reciprocal sharing of institutional experience and has signed a partnership agreement for the association. HU's first class of undergraduate students began in August 2014. HU Talent Outreach Program, launched in 2016, provides selected students a tuition fee waiver for four-year undergraduate program. Wasif Rizvi is the founding President of the University. While, Anjum Altaf is the provost of the university.
Campus
The university's campus is located behind the Jinnah International Airport runway and covers an area of around 6.3 Acres. The campus is noted for being one of the fewhandicapped-accessible campuses in the city and is a non-residential campus. The university's laboratories are designed and furnished by Research Facilities Design. In 2010 the campus design won the Merit Award for Excellence in Planning for New Campus from the Society for College and University Planning. The university's central auditorium covers 25,000 square feet of area, and seats over 300 persons. In addition, the university holds two lecture halls, the Tariq Rafi Lecture Theatre which holds 300 students and the Soorty Lecture Theatre which holds 60 seats. The campus includes several classrooms with not more than 20 seats each. The university also includes an amphitheatre which covers an area of 4500 square feet. The Habib library covers an area of 21,000 square feet and is a semi-public space and is home to information commons, lounges, and discussion rooms.
Academics
The university incorporates a liberal arts education with cultural sensitivity within its curriculum. It is mandatory for every student studying there to follow the liberal arts curriculum in all its offered courses. In addition to local regional languages, all students are required to study a liberal arts curriculum comprising sociology, history, philosophy – Western, Eastern and Islamic – and anthropology. The university terms this a "Habib Core Curriculum" based on seven “Forms of Thought". These include:
Yohsin Lecture Series is a public lecture series modeled after the public lecture series of the London School of Economics. The Inaugural Yohsin Lecture was delivered by Dr. Munir Fasheh in November 2011. Other prominent speakers have included the Dean for SAIS at the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Vali Nasr and MIT Professor, Dr. .
The Dhanani School of Science and Engineering invites professionals of academia to share their ideas on a wide variety of subjects through its Public Lecture Series. The HU DSSE series aims to enlighten, motivate and stimulate academic debate. Every such event is focuses on general public issues and encourages participants to think across the academic disciplinary spectrum.
Interdisciplinary Development Research and Action Center (IDRAC)
IDRAC draws its name from the Urdu word Idrac ادراک which is a polysemic word that signifies the broad plurality of processes and connotations associated with “thinking”, including sensory awareness and perception, cognition, understanding, interpretation, reasoning, and meaning-making. HU uses this to evoke superabundance and boundlessness while simultaneously triggering the evocative of human finitude in accessing truth and experience. The linguistic social significance of IDRAC is derived from its location at the intersection of power and limit; the power to understand reality and bring about positive change, and the realization of limitations that bind thinking, perception, cognition, and the articulations of tells. The IDRAC Center at HU fosters research and action on key development challenges facing Pakistan and the larger South Asian region. The Center hosts a series of activities in the region while serving society and contributing to the social welfare.
Center for Media and Design (CMD)
The Center for Media and Design provides a multidisciplinary platform for research, practice and critical reflection in the fields of media, expression and design. HU's faculty attempts to respond to new communication technologies, media and expressive forms, and the rapid transformation of social structures along with development of interdisciplinary projects of local and international collaborations. The Center acts as a hub for talks, symposia, exhibitions, literary readings, and arts such as film, video, music, dance, theater and performance. The center aims to be socially responsive, open to experiment and keenly aware of its historical and local contexts.
Arzu Center
The Center is named after the 18th century poet, linguist and lexicographer, Siraj-ud-Din Ali Khan Arzu. The Arzu Center is linked to HU's School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences programs and serve to meet the vernacular requirements of the University. The Center's scope of work covers a wide range including language instruction, translation from and into the regional languages. It also represents regional languages and humanities that contributes to HU's overall vision and institutional mission through nurturing pedagogy, research and scholarship in the various languages from Pakistan. This Center is designed to contribute to the revitalization of these urban and rural languages, heritage and cultures found throughout the country.
People
Notable people associated with the university include:
