Ashoka students seek return of professors

The students’ body at Ashoka University on Saturday announced a “two-day boycott of classes” next week to protest the resignation of two professors, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Arvind Subramanian, even as more academics -- including former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan -- weighed in and expressed their support for Mehta and his departure on fears that he could be a “political liability” for the university on account of his strong political views.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Ashoka Student Government demanded “public acknowledgement by the founders” of Mehta’s statement about “political liability” and an assurance that he will be “given a public unconditional offer letter”; an open meeting between the founders and the students’ body; and the “divesting of administrative powers and roles from the founders” to the “elected representatives of faculty, students, and administration”. The statement added that the students would protest till these demands were met, and added that if they were not “met by Tuesday” (March 23), the students would “organise a separate movement demanding that the Vice-Chancellor resign”.

The university and the founders have so far not offered their version of events.

During a townhall with students on Thursday, VC Sarkar rejected allegations that Mehta was asked to resign due to his role as a government critic. “I spoke to Pratap and tried to persuade him multiple times not to leave Ashoka and to withdraw his resignation,” she said.

News of Mehta’s exit broke on Thursday — he resigned on March 15 — and caused a stir among students and faculty of the university, and the academic community across India and overseas. “After a meeting with Founders it has become abundantly clear to me that my association with the University may be considered a political liability. My public writing in support of a politic 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,” he said in his resignation letter.

Faculty members also wrote to V-C Malabika Sarkar saying that Mehta’s exit would set a “chilling precedent”. Sheldon Pollock, a Sanskrit scholar who is closely associated with Ashoka University, also issued a statement on Thursday expressing his solidarity with Mehta.

On Friday morning, his colleague and former chief economic adviser Subramanian resigned saying he was “devastated” by Mehta’s resignation, and it reflected the university’s inability to protect “academic freedom and expression”.

Late on Friday, around 150 academics from overseas universities wrote an open letter terming Mehta’s exit as a “dangerous attack on academic freedom”.

In the letter, addressed to Ashoka trustees, administration, and the faculty, the academics express their “distress” over Mehta’s resignation under “political pressure”. “A prominent critic of the current Indian government and defender of academic freedom, he had become a target for his writings. It seems that Ashoka’s Trustees, who should have treated defending him as their institutional duty, instead all but forced his resignation,” it read.

The signatories included Homi K Bhabha, Anne F Rothenberg, professor of humanities at Harvard University; Erwin Chemerinsky, dean at the University of California Berkeley School of Law; Rogers Smith, Partha Chatterjee of Columbia University; Faisal Devji, professor of Indian history, University of Oxford; and Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School.

The university alumni council on Friday held a meeting to discuss the future course of action in order to “protect the academic freedom in the university”.

On Saturday, Rajan weighed in on LinkedIn. He wrote that “free speech” is the soul of a great university and by “compromising on it, the founders (of Ashoka) have bartered away its soul”. “The reality is that professor Mehta is a thorn in the side of the establishment. He is no ordinary thorn because he skewers those in government and in high offices like the Supreme Court with vivid prose and thought-provoking arguments,” he added.

HT learns that on Friday, some of the founders met Mehta and sought his return. Ashoka University did not respond to queries, saying a statement on the matter will be issued soon.