Blog

I wanted to think through various issues at the interface of science and society in relation to recent progress in AI/ML. So I reviewed “The AI Con” by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna for The India Forum. If people get a chance to read through the review, I’d be glad to hear comments/criticism.

https://www.theindiaforum.in/book-reviews/sharp-industry-thin-science

Israel has been suspended from the International Olympiad on Astrononomy and Astrophysics (IOAA). The IOAA is part of a network of science Olympiads that seek to identify the most talented high-school students in each country.

This year the IOAA was held in Mumbai. Israel had pre-registered for the event although, eventually, it did not send a team. Members of the Indian and international scientific community sent the letter below to the IOAA requesting it to suspend the State of Israel, while allowing students from Israel to participate as individuals.

The initial signatories of the letter were Alok Laddha, Suvrat Raju, Ronak Soni, Sandip Trivedi, Ravinder Banyal, Ashoke Sen, Nissim Kanekar, Ahmed Abbes and Pierre Vanhove. In all, more than 500 academics signed the letter.

The IOAA board, comprising representatives from 64 countries discussed this proposal on 18 August. While the issue was not relevant for this year due to Israel’s absence, a significant majority of the board voted to suspend Israel from future Olympiads while allowing individual students to participate.

We greatly appreciate Prof. Aniket Sule, the president of the IOAA for his integrity and commitment to democratic values in placing our letter before the international board for an open discussion and vote.

This sets a significant and important precedent: countries that are guilty of genocide and practice apartheid are not welcome to send official representatives to international scientific and cultural events. Individuals from those countries can participate but not as official representatives of their governments.

I hope that, from next year, the other science Olympiads and even the Olympic games follow this precedent.

Of course this is only a small step in the larger scheme. But to whatever small extent, I hope this conveys the horror and disgust with which the rest of the world views Israeli policies in Palestine and encourages the Israeli government to change course immediately.

Very privileged to have attended the Advanced Summer School on Quantum Physics organized by Scientists for Palestine. I learned a lot from the courageous and generous Palestinian students who attended the event despite everything that is happening. Many thanks to Scientists for Palestine for organizing this.

Please join us for an interaction between academics from India and Pakistan on Thursday evening. See below for details and Zoom link. This meeting is open to everyone.

𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚-𝐏𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

When nations are at war, nationalism dominates the narrative and exercising freedom of speech may be misconstrued as treason. In the prevailing atmosphere of jingoism and warmongering, how should academic scholars conduct themselves and advance the causes of peace and justice?

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86579487198?pwd=gvWIpW1FEE37StIbHKeYFDlamSH4f9.1

Date and day: 12 June, Thursday

Time: 7:30 pm, Pakistan time, 8 pm, India time

Chair: Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Physics, Pakistan

Speakers: Mridula Mukherjee, History, India A.H. Nayyar, Physics, Pakistan Achin Vanaik, Political Science, International Relations, India Syed Jaffar Ahmed, Social Sciences, Pakistan Aditya Mukherjee, History, India Sadia Manzoor, Physics, Pakistan Radha Kumar, Peace and Conflict Resolution, India Riaz Ahmad, Chemistry, Pakistan Amit Singh, Mechanical Engineering, India Riaz Shaikh, Social Sciences, Pakistan

Moderator: Suvrat Raju, Physics, India

Academics for Democratic Rights (https://acdr.in/) and India Academic Freedom Network (https://www.indiaacademicfreedom.net/) are organizing a virtual discussion on the UGC Draft Regulations tomorrow: Sunday, 6 April at 3 pm.

The discussion will be led by Dr. Furqan Qamar, Dr. Sudhanshu Bhushan and Dr. P. K. Abdul Rahiman.

If you would like to attend, please register at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QhY0ie3gjPyhIXw-SMUTsGJL9eqNIKX4uG6Bpi4WZ8c/edit

(Alternately scan the QR code in the poster below)

I am surprised at how rapidly elite U.S. Universities have crumbled under pressure from the Trump administration and are cracking down on pro-Palestinian activism.

Here is an email I sent to Harvard’s president today in response to an email sent by Harvard’s leadership to all alumni signalling that it is willing to appease the Trump administration.

A second point I find disturbing is that while some academics have been willing to raise the rather obvious concerns about academic freedom, very few are willing to make the other obvious point: the student protesters are taking a brave and morally correct stand by opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Trump administration is simply responding like other repressive regimes do: faced with criticism that it cannot address on the merits, it chooses to attack its critics by inventing false charges of anti-semitism.

In her budget speech earlier this month, the Finance Minister slipped in a seemingly unrelated remark: the government plans to amend the Indian nuclear liability act. This was deliberately timed so that the Prime Minister could point to this announcement in Washington, which he is visiting today. Nuclear liability might seem to be an arcane detail but this announcement should concern all of us.

Ever since the Indo-US nuclear deal, the U.S. has wanted India to buy nuclear reactors from American companies. However, there are two problems: (a) these reactors are extraordinarily expensive; the main American reactor on offer is the Westinghouse AP1000 and the last two constructed in America cost $36.8 billion. (b) American companies want a legal arrangement where they are completely indemnified from the consequences of an accident! (Similar comments apply to multinational companies from countries like France.)

In 2010-11, the UPA government created a law to appease the U.S. This law overrides the Indian “absolute liability” framework for hazardous enterprises. It channels any liability for an accident to the operator, which is an Indian public sector company and caps the liability at an absurdly small amount. However, due to pressure from civil society and the opposition, the UPA government was forced to include a clause called the “right of recourse”, which allows the operator (but not the victim) to sue the reactor manufacturer if the accident was caused by a design defect. The US has been furious about this clause ever since and, partly for this reason, its companies have been unable to sell in India.

This is an excellent outcome! It has saved us from several Enron-type deals: had India bought these reactors, we would have been paying for them for years, with this money lining the pockets of U.S. companies. The fact that no such reactor has been imported in almost two decades is a significant success of peoples movements that have pointed out their problems.

It now appears that the Modi government has announced its intention to bend the knee and amend the law to please Washington.

In today’s Hindu, Ramana and I wrote about the implications of this potential amendment and what it reveals about the government’s priorities. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/nuclear-energy-dangerous-concessions-on-liability/article69211997.ece

Lectures from my introductory QFT course last year: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL04QVxpjcnjhg3WHxG8sC1QHrpY_7dnoz

This is a fairly standard course that we offer at ICTS annually. I don’t think I said much that was new. We keep the Moodle open for anyone to join and view. A few months back, an unidentified person downloaded the lecture videos and uploaded them to Youtube – the same person also took them down a few weeks later. To my surprise, I heard from a number of students from other institutes who said they had found them useful. So we have now uploaded this ourselves.