More than 150 academicians from Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge and other international universities on Friday expressed solidarity with political scientist and commentator Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who resigned as professor from Ashoka University earlier this week.
In an open letter to the trustees and founders of the university, the academicians criticised the “assault” on the values, which they said Mehta has always practiced. “In political life, these [values] are free argument, tolerance, and a democratic spirit of equal citizenship,” they wrote. “In the university, they are free inquiry, candor, and a rigorous distinction between the demands of intellectual honesty and the pressure of politicians, funders, or ideological animus. These values come under assault whenever a scholar is punished for the content of public speech.”
They added: “When that speech is in defense of precisely these values, the assault is especially shameful.”
The signatories…