JNUTA condemns disruption of Nivedita Menon’s lectures, threats faced by JNU faculty

NEW DELHI: Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association (JNUTA) condemned disruption caused during lectures delivered by Nivedita Menon at two Odisha universities. It also expressed concerns about the trend of intimidation of scholars across the country, particularly in Orissa.

Nivedita Menon, a professor at JNU, was invited to deliver lectures on "Feminisms for the 21st Century" on the occasion of International Women’s day at Gangadhar Meher University (GMU) and Sambalpur University in Odisha on March 12 and 13. The lecture was duly approved by the vice chancellors of the respective universities.

However, her inaugural talk at GMU was disrupted by a handful of people, mostly outsiders to GMU reportedly owing allegiance to the student wing of the RSS, by shouting slogans and preventing her from speaking. Her talk at Sambalpur University was not allowed to be streamed which she was requested to deliver online.

“It is extremely worrying that all those who had come and were listening to the talk by Prof. Menon were forced to leave the lecture hall by these anti-social elements and deprived of the opportunity to interact and share their views with her despite both these programmes being officially organised and endorsed by the University following due process,” the JNUTA said in a statement.

Stating that this is not an isolated incident, the teachers group said “it is a continuation of the threat that members of the JNU faculty have been facing across the country due to the vicious campaign launched against the university that started during the former Vice Chancellor Prof M Jagadesh Kumar's term”.

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Demands of JNUTA

Expressing solidarity with the organisers and the audience of the programme, it demanded the police to take immediate action against the perpetrators. Further, it asked the university administration of both universities to issue a statement clarifying the facts and condemning the incident.

The JNUTA EC also promised that it will soon organise both these talks of Nivedita Menon and invite them to the online session.

“Unfortunately, the current JNU Vice Chancellor Prof Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit's repeated statements that she is committed to ensuring the academic freedom of the JNU community and would not tolerate any malicious campaign against JNU sound hollow when a special pre-release screening of a movie that openly calls for violence against JNU teachers is held at the JNU convention centre under her watch,” it said.

“The least the JNU community was expecting from the Vice Chancellor that she intervenes and confronts this malicious campaign and stands up for JNU, its faculty and students, and takes steps necessary to get them immediately withdrawn from the public domain,” it added.

The JNUTA assured the JNU community that it will continue to fight for defending the academic autonomy and stand firm against all attempts to vilify the university by the anti-academic and anti-social elements.