How the RSS is infiltrating India’s intellectual spaces Hartosh Singh Bal FOR TWO DAYS IN MARCH 2017, over seven hundred academics and vice chancellors from 51 state and central universities gathered in Delhi University to learn how to bring the “true nationalist narrative” to academia. The closed-door event was called the Gyan Sangam—knowledge summit—and one of its… Read More The Takeover (2019)
Taiwanese people look on with concern at fate of Hong Kong’s independent booksellers, after series of arrests in recent months Amy Hawkins and Yu-chen Li in Taipei Walking out of one of Hong Kong’s last remaining independent bookstores, hands behind her back but head held high, the woman’s T-shirt was emblazoned with a simple slogan: “I am a bookstore… Read More ‘A statement of freedom’: T-shirt slogan goes viral and book sales rocket in Taiwan after Hong Kong raids
The World at First Light: A New History of the RenaissanceBernd Roeck Tom Verde Historians typically trace the birth of the Renaissance to fourteenth-century Florence. Then, after three centuries, that brilliant era of artistry eventually gave way to the Reformation, with its shift away from humanism, and the Enlightenment, which picked up (and ran) where… Read More Why the West?
From “The Burnout Society” to “The Tonality of Thought,” tech philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s ultra-short books reveal why online liberation has felt more like voluntary captivity. Matt Elmore Byung-Chul Han is one of Europe’s most widely read philosophers. His audience in the United States has grown considerably over the last decade, though mostly outside the academy;… Read More Why Is Digital Freedom Making Us Exhausted and Sad? The philosophy of Byung-Chul Han
Pravin Raj Singh At its core, a literature syllabus is more than a list of prescribed texts. It is a pedagogical contract, a space where students and educators commit to engaging with the world’s complexities, however uncomfortable. This contract enables critical engagement with power, history, caste, gender and the structures that shape our lives. It… Read More The Quiet Dismantling of Liberal Education at Delhi University
NB: A profound reminder that our self-appointed decolonisers themselves need to decolonise their minds. DS भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा और संघी एजेंडा पर समाजशास्त्री प्रो. पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल के तीखे सवाल। क्या हिंदुत्व एजेंडा के तहत सिर्फ वैदिक-ब्राह्मण परंपरा का महिमामंडन हो रहा है और बौद्ध, जैन तथा लोकायत जैसी लोक परंपराओं को दरकिनार किया जा रहा… Read More भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा या RSS का कोई छुपा हुआ एजेंडा? Indian Knowledge System: प्रो. पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल
Apoorvanand “ Why did Muktibodh became uniquely significant in the summer of 1964? Why did …almost all the weeklies, monthlies and dailies started introducing him to their readers?” Fifty years ago, Shamsher Bahadur Singh, asked this question in the preface to Chand Ka Munh Tedha hai, the first anthology of poems of Muktibodh being compiled. Muktibodh then,… Read More Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh: Put fire back into firewood / The Ultimate expression: Muktibodh’s poem, “Andhere Mein”
Wake up: Song by Arcade Fire – 2004 Somethin’ filled upMy heart with nothin’Someone told me not to cry Now that I’m olderMy heart’s colderAnd I can see that it’s a lie Children, wake upHold your mistake upBefore they turn the summer into dust If the children don’t grow upOur bodies get bigger but our… Read More Wake up
The Shell University: Fully automated cheating. AI has taken something fundamental from the business of teaching and learning… If I’ve learned one thing this year, it’s that we need recenter the human part of the university: the student-teacher relationship. By Rory Truex As I write this, my students are taking an in-person exam on Chinese… Read More This Semester Shook My Faith as a Professor
Junk speak, like junk food, encourages verbal littering. Moronic vagueness is another form of junk. Not to mention how amazing and awesome everything is… Louis de Bernières Ilive in the Norfolk countryside, and what irritates me most about living here is the deluge of litter that gets thrown out of car windows in the lane outside my… Read More I really don’t like ‘like’ – or other imprecise and redundant speech
After the truth-shower 