I do not like to derail the thread from its topic but I can’t help but notice the dichotomy between the above two statements.
We do have significant Q Anon believers in the populace so you can not expect an “American answer “ to be always curious and accepting/agreeable to a new set of facts presented. If just interacting with few USC students can lead to generalization about all Pakistani engineers (or CAE grads) and their mindset, the same can also be applied elsewhere. Anyhow everyone has their own mental picture based on their lived experiences and I am not aiming to change that. There are curious minds everywhere as no one has a monopoly on curiosity.
We unfortunately stifle curiosity at school level, do not teach maths as the foundational language of STEM and thus our best and brightest minds have a handicap at the world stage.
Still in my experience they have met those challenges head on and overcome that handicap and still excelled. There are many CAE grads/ex-faculty who are currently faculty in US Universities and there was one who I think became the head of the aerospace department at a decent university here.