The Hindu American Foundation[i] (HAF) Board of Directors notes an anonymous[ii] posting on this blog site on September 16, 2015, ostensibly representing over one hundred scholars with expertise in South Asia that co-signed a statement[iii] also previously posted here. After publicly calling for a debate and spirited conversation over the upcoming visit of Indian Prime…
Over the Labor Day weekend, most signatories of the “Faculty Statement on Narendra Modi’s Visit to Silicon Valley” received threats from individuals in South Africa and Canada and email harassment from the Hindu Vivek Kendra, a Hindu nationalist organization affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member. Several letter signatories have also been targeted…
In March, New York University professor Andrew Ross was stopped from boarding a flight to Abu Dhabi, where NYU has a campus and where Ross had intended to conduct research. The NYU administration has maintained that its Abu Dhabi campus will observe the AAUP’s principles on academic freedom and that all faculty and students will…
Guest blogger Lyn S. Graybill had earlier taught in West Africa as a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Fourah Bay College of the University of Sierra Leone. When the plane landed in Abidjan in August, I was excited. I had been accepted under a three year contract to teach Political Science courses at the International University of Grand-Bassam,…
September 1, 2015: When we released our letter on August 27, 2015 we had 125 signers. Despite the intimidation and harassment we have received at this blog site and elsewhere, more faculty have written to us asking that their names be included in the list of signatories–we now number 135. We are heartened by our…
By Andrew Scheinman The fallout at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) continues unabated: the Chancellor and Provost have both “stepped down,” and Steven Salaita’s legal team’s added destruction of evidence claims to their lawsuit. Here in Urbana-Champaign we’re having a “red soybeans” moment, what with the show-trials and blood sports already occurring and, no…
As faculty who engage South Asia in our research and teaching, we write to express our concerns about the uncritical fanfare being generated over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley to promote “Digital India” on September 27, 2015. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley highlights the role of a country that…
Last month, AcademeBlog reported on the controversy involving Northwestern professor Alice Dreger and reprinted Dreger’s own blog about censorship of sexual content at Northwestern. Yesterday, Dreger resigned from Northwestern in protest. Here is the full text of her resignation letter: Monday, August 24, 2015 Provost Daniel Linzer Northwestern University 633 Clark Street Evanston, IL 60208-1101 Dear…
August 23, 2015 Dear President Killeen and Acting Chancellor Wilson, We the forty-one undersigned Executive Officers and campus leaders from departments and academic units across the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign urge you to help end the crisis that has plagued our university for more than a year. It has increasingly become clear that the…
Guest blogger Steve Krause published this on August 18, 2015 on his blog stevendkrause.com: A different kind of Trigger… There are two articles making the rounds about trigger warnings of late. There’s “The Coddling of the American Mind” in The Atlantic by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. And there’s (at least one) response to it, “The…