Students of Delhi University’s renowned Ramjas College staged a protest march today, Monday, December 4, against the ‘arbitrary’ displacement of the college’s ad-hoc faculty from the English department. The students highlighted that eight out of 10 teachers from the English department have been displaced due to ‘politically motivated’ reasons.
This is not the first time that such concerns have come forward from DU’s colleges. Ad-hoc displacements have been going on at DU over the past few months after the recruitment drive began for permanent positions. Before Ramjas College, Indraprastha (IP) College for Women, Hindu College, Satyawati College, Dyal Singh College, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce and other colleges also grabbed headlines due to the same issue.
On Monday, several students from Ramjas and members of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) protested in front of the principal's office, demanding immediate retention of the displaced faculty members.
“We will continue this movement until we get an answer from the principal. All these teachers who have been displaced have been in the department for years, they have credibility. But just because they want to recruit people with certain affiliations, their experience of 12 or 15 years doesn't matter,” said Anjali, AISA DU Secretary.
The students claimed that Principal Rajendra Prasad addressed the protestors saying that the recruitment interviews were conducted on the basis of merit only.
“We lost a teacher in Hindu College due to this. In IP College, all of the teachers were displaced from the sociology department, none of them were retained. These are the teachers who formed the department. This is happening across colleges. In Ramjas, earlier, faculty members from the history department were also displaced in the same way. If you compare, teachers who have been newly recruited do not have as much subject expertise or experience or as many research papers as ad-hoc teachers do,” added Anjali.
In the past, DU’s teachers associations have also raised concerns over the en-masse displacements of ad-hoc faculty urging that all existing ad-hoc teachers at the university be absorbed as permanent faculty as a one-time measure.