Ashoka University row: Prof Das didn't violate any norm of academic practice, says Economics Dept 

The Department of Economics at Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana, wrote an open letter to the university's governing body today, Wednesday, August 16, to express its disappointment over the acceptance of Assistant Professor Sabyasachi Das' resignation. In the letter, they claimed that the resignation's ''hasty'' acceptance has damaged their faith, reports IANS.

“The offer of resignation by our colleague Prof. Sabyasachi Das and its hasty acceptance by the University has deeply ruptured the faith that we in the faculty of the Department of Economics, our colleagues, our students, and well-wishers of Ashoka University everywhere, had reposed in the University's leadership,” the department wrote in the letter.

In the open letter, the department attests that, “Prof Das did not violate any accepted norm of academic practice. Academic research is professionally evaluated through a process of peer review.” Moreover, the department calls “the governing body's interference in this process to investigate the merits of his recent study” institutional harassment. 

Further, the department says that this move “curtails academic freedom, and forces scholars to operate in an environment of fear.” It goes on to read, “We condemn this in the strongest terms and refuse as a collective to cooperate in any future attempt to evaluate the research of individual economics faculty members by the governing body.”

“The Ashoka Economics department has been painstakingly built into what is widely considered amongst the preeminent economics departments in the country. The actions of the governing body pose an existential threat to the department. It is likely to precipitate an exodus of faculty, and prevent us from attracting new faculty,’’ it added.

The Department letter further demands that the university unconditionally offer Prof Sabyasachi Das his position at Ashoka, and affirm that the governing body will play no role in evaluating faculty research through any committee or any other structure. These, they say, reaffirm its commitment to academic freedom.

“Unless these questions regarding basic academic freedoms are resolved before the start of the Monsoon 2023 semester, faculty members of the department will find themselves unable to carry forward their teaching obligations in the spirit of critical enquiry and the fearless pursuit of truth that characterize our classrooms. We urge the governing body to address this immediately, but no later than August 23. Failure to do so will systematically wreck the largest academic department at Ashoka and the very viability of the Ashoka vision,” it said.

Ashwini Deshpande, an economist at Ashoka University and the founding director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA), stated earlier in the day on X (formerly Twitter), "Our effort was 1: not reach a point where he felt compelled to resign; failing that, 2: persuade University to not accept. Internal meetings were the only way to accomplish this; public pronouncements could not be used.”

Das left the university when a dispute erupted over his thesis that suggested malpractices in the 2019 general elections.