The dwindling academic freedom and the increasing government interference in higher education the world over, particularly in India, took centre stage at an international conference, attended by several academics, at the University of Kerala here on Monday.
Carolyn Evans, Vice Chancellor, Griffith University, Australia, emphasised on the need for the global academic community to remain vigilant against systematic efforts to undermine the autonomy of universities.
Inaugurating the two-day conference that debated various aspects of the focal theme ‘Autonomy and Academic Freedom in the Public University: Perspectives from the Global South’, Prof. Evans said Australia, which has a strong tradition of academic freedom in universities, had been witnessing troubling signs of governments using financial power to steer the institutions intellectually in directions that suited their interests.
She said the legislative framework in the country had ensured that all senior officials of universities were chosen from within the institutions. The governing bodies chose the Chancellors who then chose the Vice Chancellor in consultation with various panels. The government had no role in choosing the Chancellor or the other officials.
Favourable climate
In spite of the favourable academic climate that prevailed in the country, there had been attempts by governments to deny grants for research projects in humanities and social sciences that apparently did not align with their perspective of national interests, Prof. Evans said.
The event is jointly organised by the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi, and the Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (DCB), Kerala University.
NIEPA’s Head of the Department of Higher and Professional Education Sudhanshu Bhushan said politics was embedded in the idea of academic freedom since any decision that obstructed one’s right to education was likely to be contested by the academic community.
The case of IITs
Amrit Srinivasan, former professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, said the IITs, which had managed to remain free from the clutches of the Central university norms, had fallen prey to the control of global trade regimes on one hand and the priorities laid down by the Central government on the other. Only 591 patents had been granted to the IITs in a decade to cater to the interests of global trade regimes, he added.
Manisha Priyam, professor, Department of Educational Policy, NIEPA, and Achuthsankar S. Nair, Head of DCB, were among those who spoke.
