Sweet Dreams of Luring Scholars While Driving Our Own Away

After Donald Trump’s assault on institutions of higher education in the United States, a curious excitement can be noticed in certain circles in India. Those who live by the maxim that another’s calamity is their opportunity have begun to imagine that the distinguished teachers and researchers resigning from or being forced out of the American universities because of Donald Trump’s campaign of “Americanisation” can now be lured to India, especially those of Indian origin.

It has been reported that Harvard University has made substantial cuts in PhD admissions across several disciplines. Harvard claims that it faces a shortage of funds and is therefore compelled to economise on its research programmes. But critics insist that the crisis is not of funds but of vision. It is now evident that, because of Trump’s narrow and nationalist policies, independent research has become increasingly impossible. 

The so-called financial constraint is only the result of a policy under which government aid will henceforth go only to those institutions willing to abandon “liberal” and “leftist” perspectives. Some universities have already chosen to compromise with the government. And this compromise is not confined to teaching and research in the social sciences or the humanities; it is seeping into the sciences as well.

The result is that economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo are leaving MIT for the University of Zurich. MIT has refused to accept several of Trump’s conditions and will therefore suffer financial losses. Other scholars, too, are turning away from American institutions and seeking refuge in other countries.

Also read: What the Entry of Foreign Universities into India Can do to Education

Trump’s tightening of visa policies has also created new barriers for non-American scholars. The spirit of diversity that once animated admissions and appointments is now under assault. These newly enforced policies are corroding the autonomy of research and teaching. It was precisely that freedom which had drawn scholars from all over the world to American universities. With that freedom now shrinking, there remains no attraction except the bare continuity of employment.

Observing this, some people in India – particularly within policy circles and the commentariat – have begun to dream that the scholars and researchers harassed by Trumpian policies could find a home in India. Articles are being written about what India must do to become a knowledge-based economy. The argument runs that, at least in science and technology, India could surely attract such talent.

The NITI Aayog has already prepared a detailed document in this regard. China’s similar programme is being invoked as a precedent – one through which it succeeded in bringing back many scholars of Chinese origin.

Shobhit Mahajan, professor of Astrophysics at Delhi University, has pointed to the many difficulties such a plan would face in India. Issues of salary, housing, and the approval of research projects will themselves be enormous obstacles. The gulf between the pay scales of Indian and American institutions is wide. Working conditions in India are poor and often humiliating. The country spends only a negligible part of its budget on research. Over the past eleven years, the allocation for higher education has steadily declined. In the name of science, today’s policymakers seem to know only two letters – A I. It is dangerous even to think of invention in a country where the prime minister proudly announces that he has made it easier for young people to make “reels.”

But beyond these material obstacles lies another, more decisive one. Why should professors in American universities wish to abandon the places that were once their dream – the very institutions for which they left their own countries? The answer lies in Trump’s narrow and anti-intellectual nationalism. Since his arrival, surveillance on campuses has intensified. 

Teachers are being marked out as “anti-American,” as “leftists,” as advocates of racial equality, or as supporters of Palestine – and a systematic campaign has been launched to drive them out.

All this has a familiar ring to us in India. When Trump threatened American universities that they must either accept his government’s policies or forgo state aid, Columbia University promptly capitulated. I wrote then to a scholar there, saying that America is being pushed down the very path that India has been walking for more than a decade. He replied, half in jest, that they only hoped not to go too far down that road.

What Trump’s government has been doing for two years, the Indian government has been doing for more than 12. We have repeatedly heard – from the prime minister himself, from ministers and bureaucrats – that universities are dens of leftists, that teachers and researchers squander taxpayers’ money, that modern education is hostile to Indian values, and that we must revive the so-called Indian knowledge tradition. In this sense, the Trump administration appears merely a disciple of our own.

In America, at least some universities went to court and resisted the government. In India, such defiance is unthinkable. Here, almost every vice-chancellor acts as a spokesperson of official nationalism. Recently, the vice-chancellor of Delhi University, addressing a public gathering, exhorted teachers and students to identify the “urban Naxals” hiding in the guise of professors and to destroy them.

Why would anyone fleeing Trump’s America wish to come to Narendra Modi’s India? How is the nationalism of the RSS superior to Trump’s? Is it not ironic that we are dreaming of luring “five-star scientists and scholars,” while our own “five-star” Indians are being driven out, and other countries are opening their doors to them? We know some of them well.

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Ashoka University told political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta that his independence of thought was harmful to the institution. He now teaches in the United States. Another Indian scholar at Ashoka, Arvind Subramanian, chose to return to America because of the suffocating academic climate in India. Indian-origin nobel laureate in Chemistry Venki Ramakrishnan, after attending the Indian Science Congress in 2016, vowed never to attend it again. He criticised the government’s promotion of pseudoscience. Another jewel of India, Amartya Sen, has been repeatedly humiliated by this government. For years, a state-sponsored campaign of hatred has been directed against historian Romila Thapar. And this list is long.

It is now well known that capable scholars in our universities have abandoned all hope of being appointed to institutions like Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), or Jamia Millia Islamia. The principal criterion for recruitment there has become an open secret. We now advise our best students to apply to private universities, knowing that there is no place for them in institutions like Delhi University. They tell us that in job interviews, they are humiliated by the experts. Many of them have to leave academic life after trying in vain. In such an environment, how can a good scholar even imagine joining these universities, where excellence is neither desired nor respected?

The destruction of academic freedom in the United States is still in its early stages. In India, campuses have already, over the past eleven years, been turned into abattoirs of intellect and excellence. The slaughter of talent may not spill blood on the streets, but can it be that Americans are unaware of it? Then why would they come here – except to embrace an intellectual suicide?

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.

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