Two Ashoka University profs quit, 87 faculty cite threat to academic freedom

The open letter to the university’s Governing Body posted on Twitter by the official handle of the Economics Department, was also shared by Ashwini Deshpande, Professor of Economics, and Founding Director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) at Ashoka University. The letter, which Deshpande confirmed reflected a consensus of the Economics Department, demanded that Das be offered his position at the university “unconditionally” and that the Governing Body play no role in “evaluating faculty research through any Committee or any other structure”.

“The offer of resignation by our colleague Prof. Sabyasachi Das and its hasty acceptance by the University has deeply ruptured the faith that we in the faculty of the department of Economics, our colleagues, our students, and well-wishers of Ashoka University everywhere, had reposed in the University’s leadership… We urge the governing body to address this immediately, but no later than August 23, 2023. Failure to do so will systematically wreck the largest academic department at Ashoka and the very viability of the Ashoka vision,” the letter said.

At an emergency meeting of the faculty body with the University’s leadership, demands were made to offer back Das his position and to guarantee academic freedoms in the campus. Earlier on Tuesday, August 15, Amit Chaudhuri, Head of Department, Professor of Creative Writing, wrote to the V-C and the Dean of Faculty, and red-flagged the “ongoing threats to the all-important domain of academic freedom”.

In the mail was attached a ‘Letter on Academic Freedom’ signed by as many as 87 faculty including Nayanjot Lahiri, Pulapre Balakrishnan, Saikat Majumdar and Madhavi Menon. When contacted, Chaudhuri told The Indian Express, “We framed this letter because we thought the situation had been dealt with in a way that was not admissible in a university and also because we had a document for academic freedom that was framed after the departure of Pratap Bhanu Mehta which had guidelines and commitments that are the university’s official positions about academic freedom and not some tweet whose origins we know nothing about. One thing that will happen now, hopefully quickly, is the institution of a Committee for Academic Freedom so that ad hoc decisions which we know nothing about become impossible.”

The developments come just three days before a new academic session is scheduled to commence at Ashoka University. An email to the spokesperson and the Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University has not yet elicited a response.

The departments of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University also wrote to several governing body members, expressing support for the department of economics. “We stand by our colleagues in the Department of Economics and echo their demand that Professor Sabyasachi Das’s position in Ashoka be reinstated. We also demand accountability from the governing board and senior colleagues responsible for this debacle, and seek affirmation from the governing body that it will play no role in evaluating faculty research or make senior faculty carry out this exercise by appointing ad hoc committees or bodies,” the departments said.

Das, an Assistant Professor in the department, resigned last week. The University confirmed his resignation on Monday, and said in a statement, “After making extensive efforts to dissuade him, the university has accepted his resignation… Dr Das’s paper on Indian elections was the subject of widespread controversy after being shared recently on social media, where it was perceived by many to reflect the views of the university… The university does not direct or moderate the research conducted by its faculty and students. This academic freedom also applied to Dr Das.”

In the open letter to the Governing Body, the Economics Department said, “Prof. Das did not violate any accepted norm of academic practice. Academic research is professionally evaluated through a process of peer review. The Governing Body’s interference in this process to investigate the merits of his recent study constitutes institutional harassment, curtails academic freedom, and forces scholars to operate in an environment of fear. We condemn this in the strongest terms and refuse as a collective to cooperate in any future attempt to evaluate the research of individual economics faculty members by the Governing Body.”

The Governing Body comprises Ashoka University Chancellor Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Vice Chancellor Somak Raychaudhury, Madhu Chandak, Puneet Dalmia, Ashish Dhawan, Pramath Raj Sinha, Siddharth Yog, Deep Kalra and Ziaa Lalkaka.

The open letter to the Governing Body noted that the Ashoka Economics department was painstakingly built into what is widely considered amongst the preeminent economics departments in the country. “The actions of the Governing Body pose an existential threat to the department. It is likely to precipitate an exodus of faculty, and prevent us from attracting new faculty,” it said.

Das’s research paper “Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy” documents irregular patterns in 2019 general election in India and identifies whether they are due to electoral manipulation or precise control, i.e., the incumbent party’s ability to precisely predict and affect win margins through campaigning. “Manipulation appears to take the form of targeted electoral discrimination against India’s largest minority group – Muslims, partly facilitated by weak monitoring by election observers. The results present a worrying development for the future of democracy.”

The assumptions made by Das, the methodology adopted and the conclusions drawn, however, prompted criticism: too small a sample size (11 seats), extensive randomisation of poll officials and machines (the Chief Electoral Officer’s office does not know where a particular Booth Level Officer is posted; even BLOs get to know it three days prior), inconclusive evidence of targeted voter deletion, and no complaints of deletion of voters from minority groups or political parties.

The varsity, in a post online, had distanced itself from the paper and stated that social media activity or public activism by Ashoka faculty, students or staff in their “individual capacity” does not reflect the stand of the university.

In his critique of the paper, Mudit Kapoor, Associate Professor of Economics at ISI, Delhi, said, “The statistical findings of the paper do not support the claims in the paper.” While Das’s paper notes that “the BJP win margin in 2019 is the only case exhibiting statistically significant estimate of the discontinuity”, Kapoor said this was a “misinterpretation of their results because in 2009, for the INC, the authors found a larger estimate of discontinuity of 1.80; however, because it was not ‘statistically significant’, it was assumed that the effect was 0.”

“In the elections BJP narrowly lost, there seems to be an unusual increase in voter registration from the mean or average electoral growth… a simple reading of these graphs would suggest that evidence of targeted voter deletion was, at best, not conclusive,” he said.