New Delhi: Weeks after the arrest of Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad over a social media post related to Operation Sindoor, co-founder and trustee Sanjeev Bikhchandani defended the university’s position in a strongly worded email to a former student. In the mail, now circulating among alumni and faculty, Bikhchandani distanced academic freedom from political expression and questioned the role of activism in a liberal arts institution.
According to a Times of India report, the email, shared on an internal mailing list, responded to criticism over the university’s silence during the free speech debate that followed Mahmudabad’s arrest. “Activism is not embedded to a liberal arts university, a political post on social media is not academic scholarship, and the founders have considered walking away,” Bikhchandani wrote. “Why don’t you and other alumni offer to step in and take over? Pramath, Ashish and I have seriously discussed the option of walking away. Ashoka is too much of a headache… money, even in this day and age, does not grow on trees but it still makes the world go around,” he added, referring to fellow trustee Pramath Raj Sinha and founding chairperson Ashish Dhawan.
Debate over campus activism
Referring to frequent clashes with student and faculty activists, he said, “Activism and a Liberal Arts University are not joined at the hip. Ashoka is a Liberal Arts and Sciences University. Whether to be activists or not is a conscious choice people make. In the past I have questioned the activism at Ashoka — each time, I have been pounced upon by the activists and their supporters, both within and outside Ashoka: students, faculty, activists, etc., saying that ‘if you are running a liberal arts university, then activism goes with the territory’, that ‘I am an arrogant owner’, that ‘dirty filthy capitalists don’t understand how a university runs’ (they somehow forget that the same capitalists are paying their salaries).”
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He further clarified: “A political opinion expressed on Facebook or Twitter (X) or Instagram is not academic scholarship… You did not seek Ashoka’s consent before posting on social media, you cannot now present Ashoka with a fait accompli and expect support.”
Calling for institutional boundaries, Bikhchandani also raised a policy question: Should a full-time academic also pursue a political career? Mahmudabad has previously been associated with the Samajwadi Party.
