AAUP Condemns Violent Attack at Jawaharlal Nehru University

The American Association of University Professors joins scholars in India and around the world in condemning the violent assault on faculty and students January 5 at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. There is considerable evidence to suggest that this assault was, in the words of Indian scholar Jayati Ghosh, an instance of "targeted planned state-sponsored terror." Especially disconcerting is the apparent complicity of members of the university's administration and of the police, who stood by as an armed mob invaded the campus.

The attack occurred less than a month after students were tear-gassed and assaulted by police in the library of another New Delhi university. These assaults come in the context of systematic defunding and other attacks on higher education in India not dissimilar to those faced by US institutions. We join the thousands worldwide who have called for an independent inquiry into the assault and for bringing the perpetrators and those who facilitated their actions to justice. We support the right of students everywhere to peacefully protest injustice. Attempts to crush their protests with violence are nothing short of a blatant attack on academic freedom and democracy itself.