Deafening Silence and Choreographed Timidity in SAU, says Sri Lankan Scholar Forced to Quit Over Chomsky’s Criticism of NDA Govt
Vidheesha Kuntamalla | 05 September 2024 | The Indian Express
Describing South Asian University’s inquiry into a PhD proposal citing linguist Noam Chomsky’s criticism of the NDA government as “utterly unreasonable”, Sasanka Perera (62), the scholar who later quit over the issue, told The Indian Express that the “deafening silence” of his colleagues and the “choreographed timidity”, on campus suggests that SAU “will never again stand for academic freedom.”
Perera, a Lankan cultural anthropologist who taught Sociology at SAU for 13 years, was a founding member of its Sociology department and one of about six foreign faculty on campus. He took voluntary retirement amid a disciplinary inquiry against him over the research proposal, with July 31 being his last day on campus.
Speaking to The Indian Express from Sri Lanka, Perera said, “I decided to retire prematurely as I did not see any semblance of justice coming from a process that was initiated, in the first place, on trumped up and irrational charges. So, yes, if not for the disciplinary inquiry and the illegal, let alone unethical ways in which it unfolded, I would have opted to remain at SAU until next year to retire as I had planned. But this was simply not possible.”