Pratap Bhanu Mehta resignation: Academicians from Yale, Harvard write open letter to Ashoka University

Mehta said that the founders made it 'clear' that his association with the institution was a 'political liability'

Academics from across the world came out in support of Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta, whose sudden exit from Ashoka University has triggered a row.

Economist Raghuram Rajan hailed Mehta as “India's finest political scientists” and a “thorn in the side of the establishment”.

“He is no ordinary thorn because he skewers those in government and in high offices like the Supreme Court with vivid prose and thought-provoking arguments,” Rajan, the former RBI Governor, said in a social media post.

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More than 100 academics from universities across the world also expressed solidarity with Mehta.

“A prominent critic of the current Indian government and defender of academic freedom, he had become a target for his writings. It seems that Ashoka's Trustees, who should have treated defending him as their institutional duty, instead all but forced his resignation,” the academics said in an open letter to Trustees, Administrators and Faculty of Ashoka University.

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The signatories to the letter titled A Dangerous Attack on Academic Freedom include Lee C Bollinger of Yale University, Homi K Bhabha of Harvard University, Milan Vaishnav of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Richard Bourke, University of Cambridge, Ashutosh Varshney of Brown University among others.

“The university must be a home for fearless inquiry and criticism. We support Pratap Bhanu Mehta in his practice of the highest values of intellectual inquiry and public life,” it says.