An update on the talks on the UAPA by Natasha and Devangana I posted about a few days ago. We had a talk at ICTS on Monday without incident.
A talk was supposed to take place in IISc today but, at the last minute, the registrar stepped in and cancelled the permission that the CCE department had already granted to the organizers. The registrar declared that “event cannot be permitted to be held within the premises of the Institute”.
It is somewhat puzzling that, in an academic institute, the registrar arrogates to themselves the right to decide what discussions can or cannot happen in a department.
The student organizers then decided to cancel the talk and have an informal interaction instead. See pictures below.
The IISc adminstration then sent the security to break up even this interaction and force people to disperse! Fortunately, after the intervention of IISc faculty who were there, the security back-tracked.
I am not a member of IISc, but given the place that IISc has in the Indian scientific and academic ecosystem, I feel this affects all of us. I am absolutely appalled.
As anyone who was present at the ICTS talk can say, the discussion was absolutely innocuous. The speakers discussed aspects of the UAPA and the injustice that they saw in prisons. Is this supposed to be beyond limits in our leading academic institutions?
