Md Abdur Razzak is an Assistant Professor of Law at Jagannath University in Bangladesh and PhD candidate at UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice. In this post he sets out a pedagogical approach of socially responsive legal education which is informed by his experiences of learning and teaching across Australia and Bangladesh.
Please introduce your academic role and your faculty. How does your law school and university fit in the higher education landscape in your country?
I am an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at Jagannath University, a publicly funded institution in Bangladesh. Although the university gained full public university status in 2005, its academic roots stretch back over 150 years. The law school, established in 2008 with the aim of offering a socially responsive and interdisciplinary legal education, has since shifted toward a conventional doctrinal model, mirroring other public law schools in the country. This shift stems from limited state support and a lack of visionary academic leadership. Despite operating on a compact campus, Jagannath University accommodates approximately 20,000 students, making it the most spatially constrained public university in Bangladesh.
Why did you decide to become an academic and why did you decided to specialise in business and human rights?
My decision to become an academic is influenced by a combination of factors, two most significant to me. First, an academic career gives me the opportunity to exercise intellectual freedom and autonomy to think and work around issues I am highly passionate about, even though I am concerned about the ever-increasing neoliberal turn of academic institutions which sees little value in academic work beyond theory and analysis. Second, it offers a great platform to influence and shape the thinking of young legal minds who can potentially make larger impact in society in the long run. I feel that the chance to influence students to think beyond formal legal rules and use their critical thinking skills to reimagine the systems and rules that preserve the status-quo in society is profoundly rewarding.
Bangladesh has experienced prolonged years of colonial rule which impacted the development of legal system in ways that benefit the powerful. I have always been fascinated by how colonial legal rules, systems, and institutions continue to serve our states and business elites in different forms and settings, reproducing the colonial hierarchies in a supposedly post-colonial society. The complicity of businesses with state institutions in systematically disadvantaging the powerless and marginalized people have deeply motivated me to think and research around business and human rights.
Businesses as non-state actors have always been the beneficiary of the status quo maintained in our legal system. Although legal education has a profound role to play in challenging this status quo, academics – who are significant agent in legal education – have hardly done their part to design legal education in ways that offer some transformative pathways for generations of law students and legal practitioners beyond the deeply embedded colonial and neo-colonial legal design and enforcement of legal rules.
In my current PhD research, while I focus on the accountability of global north transnational corporations (TNCs) in entrenching systemic human rights abuses in global south states, I seek to explore also how local business elites join hands with TNCs to perpetuate exploitative labour conditions in global south countries. I take Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry as a case study to explore how accountability gaps in international law and the performative acts of legalising corporate responsibility in global north states continue to undermine the need for robust accountability measures that can challenge business-induced human rights violations around the world.
What have been the key influences on your teaching practises?
During my university years, I witnessed firsthand how critical thinking, and the questioning of entrenched ideas were often suppressed by rigid curricula and outdated pedagogical approaches. Yet, I also had the privilege of learning from inspiring teachers who encouraged me to explore legal concepts beyond the black letter of the law, connecting them to real-world issues of discrimination and inequality.
Now, as an educator, I find that teaching students from disadvantaged backgrounds offers a unique opportunity to engage with law as a transformative tool. It allows me to foster critical dialogue around challenging the status quo and to present legal education as a means of intellectual empowerment. When these students apply their knowledge in practice, they are well-positioned to confront injustices—whether rooted in flawed legislation or its misapplication—and contribute meaningfully to societal change. Coming from a society marked by deep social challenges, I am especially committed to promoting socially responsive legal education.
How would you describe the priorities and support at your law school for teaching and research?
In Bangladesh, support for teaching and research in public universities—particularly within law faculties—is grossly insufficient. Structural limitations, including inadequate infrastructure and a shortage of academic staff, have led to severely imbalanced student-teacher ratios. In practice, this makes interactive and student-centered teaching nearly impossible. For instance, law classes often accommodate 90 to 100 students in lecture-style formats, with minimal provisions for meaningful student engagement.
Research support is similarly lacking. While academic research across disciplines faces challenges, legal research is especially underfunded. Most legal scholarship remains doctrinal, with interdisciplinary approaches still rare and underdeveloped. Although public universities in Bangladesh are nominally autonomous, they are subject to increasing government intervention in key areas such as faculty recruitment, promotions, and research funding. Recent neoliberal policy influences driven by institutions like the World Bank have encouraged a shift toward privatization, further undermining the public university system. As a result, government investment in education, particularly in higher education, has declined significantly, posing serious threats to academic quality and equity.
How is your work as an academic, and the role of the university, affected by changes in national politics in your country?
Public universities in Bangladesh have long been epicenters of national political activity, with students and faculty playing a pivotal role in the country’s liberation movement. However, in the post-independence era, the entanglement of national politics with university life has increasingly undermined the academic environment. Faculty and students, often aligned with political parties, have been drawn into partisan conflicts, leading to campus violence and unrest that erode academic freedom. Successive governments have adopted policies that suppress dissent and reward political loyalty, stifling open discourse and critical inquiry in both teaching and research.
Numerous documented cases reveal that academics have faced harassment, suspension, or even arrest for expressing dissenting views or engaging in politically sensitive research. While a recent mass uprising in 2024 marked a potential turning point, offering hope for a renewed commitment to academic freedom, the lingering culture of fear and retribution persists. Academics who remain unaffiliated with political parties and advocate for critical engagement with state policies often resort to self-censorship. Their dissent is frequently confined to the classroom, rather than being expressed through research or contributions to public policy.
What is your PhD experience of being at UNSW and among the HDR cohort?
My PhD experience at UNSW has been deeply enriching and intellectually rewarding. Sharing the HDR room with a diverse cohort of highly engaged researchers has been one of the most inspiring aspects of my journey. It is a vibrant social and academic space where exciting ideas circulate freely, and informal discussions foster both intellectual growth and a strong sense of community. This environment promotes inclusivity and solidarity, encouraging us to look beyond narrow national and regional politics and engage with shared concerns that affect humanity.
From the ongoing genocide in Gaza to the struggle for self-determination in Kashmir, my HDR colleagues have consistently shown a collective commitment to confronting injustice and contributing meaningfully to global discourse. Such solidarity gives me hope. It affirms that academics—when united by purpose and guided by empathy—can be a powerful force for meaningful change, transcending differences of race, religion, nationality, and opinion to address the pressing challenges of our time.
What excites you about your job?
What I value most about teaching at my institution is the opportunity to work with students from some of the most vulnerable and underrepresented communities in Bangladesh. It drives me to give my best in the classroom, where I believe my impact is more immediate and tangible than through research, which, cynically speaking, often remains confined to theoretical discourse in today’s neoliberal academic landscape.
For me, the classroom is far more than a site of instruction; it is a vibrant, evolving space where diverse lives and perspectives converge. It is a place where we collectively explore the ideas that help us grow into more enlightened, empathetic human beings. While the broader academic environment has increasingly shifted away from contemplative scholarship—now marked by exhaustion, stress, and the relentless pressure to publish—I still find refuge in teaching. The classroom offers a rare and refreshing escape, a space where I can momentarily disconnect from the material demands of academia and reconnect with the core purpose of education.
Image: Author’s image. Taken at the 10th Business and Human Rights Researchers’ Summit, 2025 in St. Gallen, Switzerland.