Toronto: In her June 2025 essay published in Social Research, 'The University in New India: A State of Siege', literary scholar and cultural critic Supriya Chaudhuri presents a compelling account of the contemporary crisis facing Indian higher education. Drawing on a wide-ranging historical and philosophical canvas, she traces how universities - once imagined as spaces of reason, dissent and intellectual autonomy - are being steadily hollowed out by political repression, financial precarity and a deep erosion of institutional trust.
Chaudhuri's critique is incisive, layered and sobering. It catalogues not only the mechanisms of state interference and ideological intrusion but also the slow unravelling of infrastructure, academic freedom and the very idea of the university as a site of public reason. It is a diagnosis made with clarity and moral seriousness.
But it also raises a vital question - one that those of us committed to the university must now confront: if the institution is under siege, what is left to defend? And how might we imagine its renewal?
Chaudhuri's analysis resonates with developments far beyond India. In the US and Britain, we have also witnessed a steady erosion of trust in higher education - fuelled not by state coercion but by culture wars, credential fatigue, and growing scepticism toward expertise itself. Across contexts, the university is no longer assumed to be a space of truth-seeking but is often seen as a gatekeeping machine: elitist, out of touch, and increasingly irrelevant to the lived precarities of younger generations.
If we are to defend the university in this climate, we must also be willing to reimagine it. The language of moral loss - of fallen ideals and betrayed Enlightenment principles - no longer moves those for whom the university has never felt like a space of belonging. The defence of reason alone is insufficient when reason itself is dismissed as partisan, 'Western' or exclusionary.
Trump, rejected by academic elites, has encouraged the construction of parallel institutions and epistemologies. In India, we are seeing a similar logic unfold - where new civilisational narratives, often amplified by the state, are positioned not as supplements to existing knowledge but as replacements for it.
This is not merely an intellectual shift. It is a reconfiguration of what counts as knowledge, who is authorised to produce it, and what universities are for. The danger, as Chaudhuri rightly warns, is that in attempting to resist political capture, universities retreat into procedural neutrality - failing to offer an affirmative vision of their own.
What might such a vision look like? Perhaps it begins by treating the university not as a sanctuary of reason but as a battleground of meaning. If the state co-opts institutions, we must capture imagination. If curricula are constrained, art, media and culture must take up the slack. This is not to abandon scholarship but to supplement it with storytelling. If legitimacy now lives outside the lecture hall, then the university must learn to speak in new registers - ones that do not merely argue but persuade, perform and compel.
Chaudhuri's essay is an essential act of witnessing. But we must now move quickly from witness to strategy. In an age where the very idea of expertise is contested, the university's survival may depend less on what it knows than on how it makes itself known. This means embracing the university not as a sanctuary of reason but as a battleground of meaning - an institution that does not retreat from conflict but teaches its members to engage it with rigour, imagination and care.
This reimagining cannot be purely theoretical. It begins with curriculum reform that invites students to interrogate knowledge itself - not just to absorb content but to also map its construction, silences and consequences. It means positioning the university as a public platform, where lectures coexist with podcasts, where peer-reviewed research is also rendered in accessible essays, performances and street-level dialogues.
It demands a new kind of institutional courage: one that opens space for the marginalised, not just as subjects of study but also as epistemic co-authors. Above all, it calls for a mode of pedagogy that acknowledges the aesthetic and affective dimensions of trust - that understands that in a post-truth world, credibility is earned not by neutrality but by presence, resonance and clarity of purpose.
The struggle, then, is not just for truth; it is, increasingly, for trust. And if the university is to matter in the years ahead, it must not only defend its values but perform them - in ways that are legible, legitimate and alive to the moment.
The writer is chair, advisory board,Green College, University of British Columbia, Canada
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com)
Chaudhuri's critique is incisive, layered and sobering. It catalogues not only the mechanisms of state interference and ideological intrusion but also the slow unravelling of infrastructure, academic freedom and the very idea of the university as a site of public reason. It is a diagnosis made with clarity and moral seriousness.
But it also raises a vital question - one that those of us committed to the university must now confront: if the institution is under siege, what is left to defend? And how might we imagine its renewal?
Chaudhuri's analysis resonates with developments far beyond India. In the US and Britain, we have also witnessed a steady erosion of trust in higher education - fuelled not by state coercion but by culture wars, credential fatigue, and growing scepticism toward expertise itself. Across contexts, the university is no longer assumed to be a space of truth-seeking but is often seen as a gatekeeping machine: elitist, out of touch, and increasingly irrelevant to the lived precarities of younger generations.
If we are to defend the university in this climate, we must also be willing to reimagine it. The language of moral loss - of fallen ideals and betrayed Enlightenment principles - no longer moves those for whom the university has never felt like a space of belonging. The defence of reason alone is insufficient when reason itself is dismissed as partisan, 'Western' or exclusionary.
Trump, rejected by academic elites, has encouraged the construction of parallel institutions and epistemologies. In India, we are seeing a similar logic unfold - where new civilisational narratives, often amplified by the state, are positioned not as supplements to existing knowledge but as replacements for it.
This is not merely an intellectual shift. It is a reconfiguration of what counts as knowledge, who is authorised to produce it, and what universities are for. The danger, as Chaudhuri rightly warns, is that in attempting to resist political capture, universities retreat into procedural neutrality - failing to offer an affirmative vision of their own.
What might such a vision look like? Perhaps it begins by treating the university not as a sanctuary of reason but as a battleground of meaning. If the state co-opts institutions, we must capture imagination. If curricula are constrained, art, media and culture must take up the slack. This is not to abandon scholarship but to supplement it with storytelling. If legitimacy now lives outside the lecture hall, then the university must learn to speak in new registers - ones that do not merely argue but persuade, perform and compel.
Chaudhuri's essay is an essential act of witnessing. But we must now move quickly from witness to strategy. In an age where the very idea of expertise is contested, the university's survival may depend less on what it knows than on how it makes itself known. This means embracing the university not as a sanctuary of reason but as a battleground of meaning - an institution that does not retreat from conflict but teaches its members to engage it with rigour, imagination and care.
This reimagining cannot be purely theoretical. It begins with curriculum reform that invites students to interrogate knowledge itself - not just to absorb content but to also map its construction, silences and consequences. It means positioning the university as a public platform, where lectures coexist with podcasts, where peer-reviewed research is also rendered in accessible essays, performances and street-level dialogues.
It demands a new kind of institutional courage: one that opens space for the marginalised, not just as subjects of study but also as epistemic co-authors. Above all, it calls for a mode of pedagogy that acknowledges the aesthetic and affective dimensions of trust - that understands that in a post-truth world, credibility is earned not by neutrality but by presence, resonance and clarity of purpose.
The struggle, then, is not just for truth; it is, increasingly, for trust. And if the university is to matter in the years ahead, it must not only defend its values but perform them - in ways that are legible, legitimate and alive to the moment.
The writer is chair, advisory board,Green College, University of British Columbia, Canada
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com)
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