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DU Cancels a Seminar from DSE’s Longest-Running Colloquiums, Convenor Resigns

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Delhi University abruptly cancelled a long-standing DSE Sociology colloquium on ‘Land, Property and Democratic Rights’ citing “administrative reasons.” The move prompted convenor Nandini Sundar’s resignation and sparked criticism over academic freedom, contrasting with DU’s promotion of the ‘Rashtriya Godhan Summit’ focusing on cow-based innovations.

 

A seminar titled ‘Land, Property and Democratic Rights’ which was scheduled to be held today, 31st October, Friday, at 3 p.m. as part of the Department of Sociology’s ‘Friday Colloquium’ series at the M N Srinivas Seminar Room in DSE—was arbitrarily cancelled by the University of Delhi’s administration without any formal reason. This academic seminar is known to be part of one of the longest-running colloquiums at the Delhi School of Economics (DSE). As reported by The Wire, the direction to cancel the event came in a WhatsApp message from the DU registrar, Vikas Gupta, to the head of the Sociology department:

“Good Morning Ma’am. Due to administrative reasons, please cancel the lecture programme scheduled for Friday the 31st October 2025. A compliance report may also be submitted immediately. Thanks.. Regards…Vikas”

Sociologist Nandini Sundar, the convenor of the colloquium, expressed her dissent on Facebook with a post that read, “ Since I can no longer guarantee the intellectual integrity of the research colloquium and that it will not be cancelled arbitrarily at the last minute, I have resigned as convenor of the colloquium.” Her post further read that,

No reasons for the cancellation were given, in writing or otherwise, so we can only speculate that the RSS-led government is scared of any discussion around land and democratic rights.

 

The severity of the issue and her distress over not paying heed to the sanctity of the event was seen as she further wrote,

“ The Friday Colloquium is among the oldest institutions of the Department of Sociology, at the Delhi School of Economics, and has functioned independently through the Emergency and all the other decades since the department was set up. The colloquium is not like any other seminar being cancelled – something we have sadly become inured to in the last decade. It was part of our teaching practice and graduate students are required to attend. It was a space for serious discussion where our students interacted with some very fine minds, and speakers came away impressed by the quality of our students.”

 

On this, Vice chancellor Yogesh Singh told the Indian Express that,

“We have cancelled the event because no prior permission was taken (by the department). The university has no problem with the tradition of the colloquium being followed… we just wanted to be informed.”

During this, DU directed college principals to share with faculty members and students the details of the ‘Rashtriya Godhan Summit’, a five-day event focused on the “welfare of cows and promotion of cow-based sustainable innovations”. The contrast between the two communications “highlights a conscious move away from scientific temper and academic integrity towards the promotion of an unscientific and regressive political agenda,” said Abha Dev Habib, professor, Miranda House, as reported by The Hindu.

Read Also: No Acid, No Attacker: Police Reveal DU Student Faked Assault on Father’s Orders

Image Credits: Nikita Bhatia (2017 report), DU Beat

Shreya Bhushan 

[email protected]

 

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The Ashokan Ethos of Academic Freedom: Terms and Conditions Apply

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Ashoka University

At the heart of the academic freedom debate at Ashoka University is the tension between an open and liberal campus and a management that is trying to run it like a corporation.

A well-respected professor at Ashoka University resigns from his position. The reason? Alleged interference by the University’s management in their extra-curricular work, which stood in opposition to the current dominant political ideology and which the university viewed as getting inextricably linked to its own public image. This is followed by the resignation of another faculty member as a form of solidarity.

If you thought I was talking about the recent resignation of the Assistant Professor of Economics, Sabyasachi Das, you’d only be half right. In 2021, another imminent intellectual and professor of political science at the university, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, resigned from his position. In his resignation letter, he wrote,

My association with the university may be considered a political liability.

Founded in 2014, Ashoka University is, in its own words, “committed to maintaining the highest intellectual and academic standards” as a “private non-profit university, an unprecedented example of public philanthropy in India”. Yet over the years, the University has shown a lack of moral fortitude to uphold these commitments whenever challenged by the dominant political forces.

On July 20, 2016, an open letter titled “Open Letter condemning State Violence in Kashmir, was floated by six Young India Fellowship (YIP) students. It was signed by 88 signatories. The following day, the University released a statement condemning the letter as well as the petitioners and effectively distancing itself from it. On October 7, Saurav Goswami, Deputy Manager of Academic Affairs, and Adil Mushtaq Shah, Programme Manager of Academic Affairs, who were among the signatories, resigned from their positions.

In December 2016, Rajendran Narayanan, a mathematics professor and the lone member of the faculty among the signatories, resigned as well. Although the Univeristy claimed that they resigned of their own volition, according to an Indian Express report, emails sent by the Univerisity’s Faculty Council showed a different picture. Prior to an email sent on October 16 which alleged Goswami and Shah being “asked to resign by the founders”, another email was sent on October 8 by the Council resisting this plan to fire Narayanan. It stated,

The Faculty Council feels that Rajendran’s dismissal would deal a death-blow to Ashoka’s vision. It will be difficult to make a case of personal or professional misconduct against Rajendran as his colleagues will vouch for his integrity, or of having violated University guidelines because there were none at the time he signed the petition. Therefore, notwithstanding the Founders’ track record in upholding freedom of speech, for which we are extremely grateful, this would very much be seen as a case of faculty dismissal consequent on exercise of free speech.

On March 17, 2021, came the news of the resignation of Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the professor of political science. He said,

My public writing in support of a politics that tries to honour constitutional values of freedom and equal respect for all citizens is perceived to carry risks for the university. In the interests of the university, I resign.

A report in The Edict (which was supported by Time Magazine), Ashoka’s student newspaper, claimed that Mehta’s resignation had paved the way for the University’s expansion and was related to funding regulation. The University denied such a claim. However, during a discussion between the Founders and the Student Government on March 21, the former claimed that they had met Mehta on March 9 and informed him that some of the Founders believed that his “political opinions often get conflated with the university’s stance and that they were simply relaying feedback”. The incident laid bare the tension between the management, responsible for the administration and funding of the University and the faculty and students, which make up the soul and the ethos of a liberal arts university.

In August this year, after Das’ working paper, titled ‘Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy’, created much furore online, the University immediately moved to distance itself from it. The Wire reported that the university’s investors had received angry calls from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Union Education Minister. In an unprecedented move, the university set up an ad hoc committee to examine the ‘political context’ behind the research paper. In a further concerning development, The Tribune reported that officials from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) visited the campus to probe the paper and Das. The University’s brazen timidity in the face of the pressure from powers that be was reputationally damaging, to say the least.

With each blow to its liberal credentials that Ashoka has seen, it has run into the same problem: the promise of a liberal and open campus, which by its very nature is supposed to be noisy, a fertile ground for dissent and debate, and which cannot, in any feasible manner, run like a corporation. A corporation, which, to ensure efficiency, demands obedience and purges anything that it deems a liability.

There is no denying that the GB is facing tremendous pressures from the political climate but it is this very tryst between the Board and the politically tied capital that stands starkly in contrast to the liberal spirit.

– wrote an undergraduate in The Edict.

If Ashoka University wants to deliver on the promises that it made at its conception—that of a liberal and open campus—it needs to stop trying to run a university like a corporate firm. The irony of this whole ordeal is that the strongest backlash towards the University’s actions every time has come from the very people it demanded obedience from—the students and the faculty, who at this point seem more committed to the University’s purported ideals than those who promised them do.

Read Also: The Sheer Obliteration of Transparency in DU PG Admissions

Featured Image Source: The Wire

Vanshika Ahuja
[email protected]

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Trying to Reclaim Universities: A Melancholic Story

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What happened to the voices of the campus? Where are we with the freedom to express dissent?

 

How do you manage to live in a highly polarised world? Being an apolitical person you can ignore, or if you hold the responsibility of calling yourself political, you can “allege” or “accuse.” But how do you manage to make sense of things when the world being ravaged by hate is your future workplace? For student journalists or the students of media, it’s the most worrying question. There is no doubt that we are facing a massive downfall of the media in the last few years, from the very orthodox and conservative relative to the very vocal and performative activist group. Everyone alleges that it is the media that is creating the ruckus, just the different ones for them.

 

From constantly and directly promoting hatred in the name of religion, targeting minorities, lobbying and creating propaganda around deliberately selective issues, and heckling, there’s almost no ditch that our mainstream media has not stepped into. This is nothing less than a moment of crisis for future workers in this arena. But as I look around, the worry of the future leaves me and the present stress grips me harder. 

 

A few months back, a notice was released to all the DU students that they would need permission from the Proctor to protest. Moreover, there has been an erasure of resistance art from campuses, section 144 was imposed in Jamia for two long months, deployment of police forces inside the campuses has been frequent, violence in Jamia’s library by the police came to light,cancellation of Sarfoora Zargar’s degree, and hundreds of other actions that signify the movement at large to  distance students and campuses from the larger political movement. The administrations, which were supposed to be benefactors of students, have turned into watchdogs bent upon making the vocal universities into apolitical centres of study.

 

 After the pandemic, such tendencies have increased with the batch that did not get to live their campus life. It feels like a gap altogether, as if something was lost that could not be recovered. The admin has taken advantage of this opportunity in the worst way possible. There is an urgent need to revive political deliberation on campuses again.

 

 The trampling down of dissent in any form across all the university campuses is worrisome that should be a public topic for distress. The concept of universities as free spaces for deliberation and discussion has eroded, as has the opportunity for Indian students to have a space to themselves free of hatred and censorship.

 

 So, how do you manage to make sense of things when the world being ravaged by hate is the one you are currently living in? With the help of students who still hold the bravado of sitting on protests, well aware that there can be consequences, and those who are determined to maintain the same atmosphere on campus. With the help of Meenakshi, who did not deter from filling a petition in the court against the arbitary removal of her candidature from the LSR SU elections, with students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and St. Stephens not letting enablers of hegemony and patriarchy into their campuses, and with the students of National School of Drama (NSD) singing Dheere Dheere yahan ka mausam badalne laga hai while their Chairperson arrives to meet them after a long protest and hunger strike.

Kashish Shivani

[email protected]

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