The two-day international seminar on autonomy and academic freedom concluded at the Kerala University on Tuesday with a call for decolonising universities and promoting linkage among universities of the global south.
Inaugurating the valedictory session, former Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac was critical of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 which, he felt, went against the pursuit of truth and progress. Citing the example of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), he alleged the premier institutions were denied academic freedom and coerced into promoting retrograde knowledge.
He also blamed accreditation bodies for dictating the operations of universities. With accreditation and grades becoming the ultimate objective of university administrations, their creative functioning had become curtailed to considerable extent. This gradually eroded the space for uniqueness, Dr. Isaac said. Achuthsankar S. Nair, Head of the Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Kerala University, chaired the session.
Delivering the keynote address, Professor Ruksana Osman of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, highlighted the possibility of universities aligning their research priorities with funding agencies. To overcome the scenario, she stressed on the need to diversify funding sources of universities.
Experts from various countries flayed various forces, both visible and invisible, that were curtailing autonomy and freedom in universities the world over. External interference had reached a worrying scenario that corporate forces were not only influencing the ethos of public universities, but had started to run their own universities., they said.
The conference was jointly organised by the National Institute of Educational Planning and DCB, Kerala University. Manisha Priyam, professor, NIEPA, presided over the programme.
