New Delhi, India: Over 250 Academics of 22 countries including USA, Canada, UK and France have condemned BJP attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University and demanded the immediate resignation of JNU Vice-Chancellor.
According to DND News Agency, over 250 senior academics and university administrators from universities in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Norway, France, Italy, Denmark, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, Chile, Mexico, Argentina Taiwan, Greece, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Brazil, Portugal and New Zealand have signed a statement calling for the immediate resignation of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Vice-Chancellor, M. Jagadesh Kumar. They include the former Archbishop of Canterbury and current Master of Magdalen College, Cambridge, Dr Rowan Williams; the President of the American Anthropological Association, Professor Akhil Gupta; President, Association for Asian Studies, USA, Prof Prasenjit Duara; and Professors Dame Caroline Humphries and Sir Christopher Clark, Cambridge.
The signatories note that the incident which took place on January 5th when an armed and politically-motivated mob was allowed to enter the JNU campus ‘violates every norm of democracy, of academic freedom, of the protection of universities from arbitrary state power, and of the duty of university administrators to protect their students and faculty.’ They observe further with regard to the failure of the JNU administrators to call for police protection as well as the university authorities’ criminalising of peaceful student protest: ‘The administration of the University, and especially the Vice-Chancellor, Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, have lost all national and international credibility’.
