Page 56 - EducationWorld Oct 2021

International News

UNITED STATES departing professors might not get their jobs back, propo-
Vax resistance crisis nents of fundamental public health measures on college

campuses are seen as likely to win ultimately, both legally
and politically.
The universities of Connecticut and Indiana have already
successfully defended their right to demand proof of vac-
cinations on their campuses, and legal experts say they ex-
pect others to prevail as well, given past US Supreme Court
rulings on public safety.
Now without a job, Fischer says state politicians, univer-
sity leaders who don’t stand up to them and fellow faculty
who are also failing to demand basic health and safety poli-
cies, are equally to blame. “A sense of futility among aca-
demic instructors, staff and students, is perhaps the biggest
obstacle to change,” he adds.
Anti-hindutva coalition

Anti-vaccine protest at Indiana University ENSORSHIP FEARS RELATED TO HINDU na-
tionalism, or hindutva, have driven some US-based
THE PERSISTENT PARTISAN SPLIT in the US Cacademics to mobilise into a new activist group and
over COVID is increasingly dividing higher educa- organise a major academic conference.
tion over vaccination rules, stimulating protests, The South Asia Scholar Activist Collective (SASAC) was
lawsuits, resignations, infections and renewed migration launched in July with founding members from eight US
to online teaching. As with the broader battle lines in US universities. Its first action has been to publish a Hindutva
society, the fight against requiring proof of vaccination sta- Harassment Field Manual to help academics targeted by
tus is most prevalent in politically conservative areas, often the Hindu right wing, and also as a resource for university
involving local governments forbidding such rules. staff or managements who want to learn about the issue.
The showdowns include faculty resignations or depar- SASAC’s materials list various threats, the most dramatic
tures at Louisiana State University, Pennsylvania State Uni- of which came in 2020 to Vinayak Chaturvedi, an associate
versity, the University of Alabama, the University of North professor at the University of California, Irvine. His parents,
Georgia and Middle Tennessee State University. On the oth- who have been threatened before because of their son’s re-
er side, several institutions have been sued by students for search, became victims of ‘swatting’, a type of harassment
mandating vaccination on their campuses, including Cali- in which a hoax call is made to police that results in armed
fornia State University, the University of Massachusetts, the SWAT officers being dispatched to a person’s home. Women
University of Connecticut and the University of Indiana. At academics writing about South Asian politics have also re-
some universities, even mandatory masking is too much. ported receiving death and rape threats and warning to end
Clemson University and the University of South Carolina or disrupt their employment.
are among institutions where academic staff protested and These topics were discussed from September 10-12 in a
sued just to win the right to expect facial coverings on their Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference, backed by more
students. than 40 institutions, including Harvard and Stanford uni-
Richard Creswick, professor of physics and astronomy versities, the University of Chicago and the University of
at South Carolina who won a state Supreme Court ruling California, Berkeley. SASAC hopes the conference will draw
in favour of the mask requirement, says he cannot under- attention to what it calls “a form of hate little known in
stand the opposition. “What is shocking to me”, says Cre- most of North America, distinct from the Hindu faith”. The
swick, whose wife is immune compromised as a result of group adds that academic freedom concerns might hinder
cancer treatments, “is that some South Carolina politicians transnational research and events, especially as India tries
will sacrifice the health and lives of South Carolina citizens to internationalise its higher education system.
solely to further their political careers by pandering to and According to Purnima Dhavan, an associate professor of
misleading their base on the efficacy of masks”. history at the University of Washington-Seattle, and one of
Jeremy Fischer abandoned his tenured position as asso- the founding members of SASAC, a common misconception
ciate professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama equates hindutva (a right-wing nationalist ideology) with
rather than teach in the absence of mandatory student Hinduism (India’s majority religion), Hindus (a people) and
vaccinations. To do otherwise, he says “might render me Hindi (a language). “Hindutva groups claim to speak for
complicit in a moral atrocity,” he says. While he and other all Indians — and more specifically for all Hindus. This is

56 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2021