Alumni of TISS’s women studies centre demand reinstatement of 4 faculty members 

The institute withdrew the sudden dismissal after the trust assured that resources will be made available to the TISS.

However, the termination of contracts of four faculty members from Advance Centre for Women’s Studies (ACWS) located on its Mumbai campus have still not been retracted.

Expressing solidarity with the faculty members, alumni from the ACWS issued a public statement on Thursday night.

The statement comes in the wake of beginning of the new academic year from June 8.

Apart from demanding reinstatement of their faculties, the statement highlights various other concerns at the centre, especially related to fund-crunch and lack of clarity on faculty positions which is important to run the academics.

“The ACWS runs MA and PhD programmes and there are many PhD scholars under the faculties who are extremely anxious with the current developments. The first year MA batch is going to start in a week’s time and there is no direction about who will teach in the current scenario.

It must be mentioned that many PhD students come from very marginalised locations, who have fought economically, socially and academically to be admitted to TISS. The consistent negligence of the institute especially to the ACWS centre only shows its lack of vision and irresponsibility,” read the statement.

The centre runs one full-time MA in Women’s Studies and PhD programme. But its students are now staring at uncertainty as out of the seven faculty members who ran the centre, only three are now currently on-board.

One of the students said, “The second year MA students will start their lectures on Monday. Whereas a new batch of first year students will begin in August. Apart from this, there are a considerable number of students who are pursuing PhD, many of them under the faculty members who are terminated. The lack of clarity is causing stress for us ahead of the academic year.”

Meanwhile ,the administration has stated that these faculty members will be reinstated as soon as UGC funds arrives.

However, one of the faculty members said, “Funding from UGC has been an issue in the past too, especially since these positions require annual renewal of approvals. All four have been working without salary since March due to the delay. But the termination letters had come as a shock to us.”