By TCN News
We, the undersigned, have been closely following the debates surrounding the crowd-sourced list of professors/academics accused of sexual harassment in academic institutions across the country. While scattered discussions have been taking place at our institution, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, we felt the need to come together and put out a statement on what we see as an unveiling of a well-known rot in the higher education system.
At the outset, considering the shocking state of justice for survivors of sexual harassment in academic spaces, we would like to state our unconditional support to every survivor who has come forward to share their trauma anonymously in order to warn future students who will be entering these universities and colleges, many of which claim premier status as centres of excellence. The list by naming some of the most powerful men in South Asian academia has through its opening up of otherwise ‘open secrets’ of sexual harassment also enabled a crucial problematisation of the structure of academia. The referral system, the fact that majority of professional advancements in academia depend on social networks, the nepotism or favoritism that itself sustains the culture of silence around sexual harassment – the list points to all such phenomena that we have come to take for granted otherwise.
The flood of testimonies after the emergence of the list laid bare the ugly truth that even campuses known for their progressive politics have a long way to go in acknowledging the gravity of the issue. One cannot fail to see that the list is symptomatic of the sheer failure of the pre-existing institutional measures and procedures, which instead of delivering justice have often resulted in further shaming and victimisation of the complainants along with serious negative repercussions on their academic careers.
We are also alarmed by the culture of silence(-ing) at CSSSC when such allegations have been leveled at professors associated with the institution. It is common knowledge at the Centre that more than one complaint of sexual harassment has emerged in the recent past against a particular member of the faculty whose name has also appeared on the list. We have also known that attempts to file complaints by students against this person have been dealt in the most undesirable and irresponsible way by the Cell on Gender Sensitization against Sexual Harassment (COGSASH). In what amounted to actually discouraging the complainants, faculty members of COGSASH expressed ‘concern’ that the complaint would compromise the anonymity of the concerned students and their families would get to know of the said incidents. It is absolutely not incidental that these complainants hail from vulnerable and minority social locations. Instead of the COGSASH being particularly supportive in such cases, the various expressions of ‘concern’ of a few of its members effectively played upon their vulnerability to further subject them to a situation of precarity.
Not only did this prevent formal complaints from being filed with the COGSASH, the concerned faculty member was also subsequently given an extension of his job term – a move which we construe as a deliberate white-washing of all allegations against him as well as act as a deterrent to future complainants. In fact jokes continued to circulate inside and outside CSSSC about the professor’s age-old ‘flair’ which could be potentially misunderstood by those with an inadequate sense of humour. Till date the said professor continues to work and teach at the institution without a display of an iota of bother. We also note with a deep sense of shame that despite knowing of these incidents, there has been no demonstrable action on our part until now.
Happenings like these are hardly out of the ordinary at a place like CSSSC. There have been incidents reported in the past of employees from marginalized backgrounds being subjected to humiliating punishment by top officials of the institution and students facing caste and communal profiling and unequal treatment on account of their marginal identities. Reservation policies have hardly been followed over time in both the case of student intake and faculty appointments. This has resulted in less than minimum representation from SC/ST/OBC/Muslim communities amongst the faculty (in fact till very recently the proportion of this representation was actually nil). With major decision-making individuals thus being drawn from the powerful castes and classes and with a vague sense of ‘merit’ and ‘reputation’ to which all issues of social justice have long been held subservient, the Centre has consistently disciplined its constituents to not go ‘public’ with their allegations and complaints. Or, like in the present case, they have been subjected to a bureaucratic reasoning whose very framework excludes cases of injustice before they are reported.
With an unexamined ideology of ‘merit’ firmly in place, the institution survives as an exclusionary site of knowledge production which is internationally known for its involvement in ‘subaltern studies’ but whose investment in a narrow Brahminical and elitist status quo is subtly ensured and encouraged. It is thus almost a case of unintended humour when another reputed professor from CSSSC whose name has appeared on the list of alleged sexual harassers responds by suggesting that it is on account of his ‘critical’ and ‘controversial’ positions in academic debates that he has been targeted.
It is our contention that the social intersection of Brahminical caste patriarchy and communal forces grants impunity to practices of sexual harassment at the institution. The power to harass is closely tied to a simultaneous play of ‘superior’ caste, gender and religious identities which serves to protect the accused, who are seen as an organic extension of the institution’s reputation and its culture of ‘merit’. We believe that the Centre has violated its position and mandate as a public institution by not being proactive in dealing with such congenital problems. This bureaucratic passivity, which in fact serves as a mask for a fairly active policy of silencing injustices, is perfectly complemented by the relative immobility of the student body in terms of any oppositional action or criticism. With intent to at least begin to correct some of these endemic issues and in light of the above observations, we specifically demand the following from the existing COGSASH in order to make it a genuinely effective body:
A. The COGSASH should take immediate cognizance of the complaints made informally known against members of the faculty and administration.
B. The COGSASH should also formally take cognizance of the fact that many of the past complainants at the institution hail from minority and vulnerable backgrounds. The COGSASH should also incorporate in its juridical and sensitization agenda the core issue of the existence and perpetuation of social marginalization through acts of sexual violence.
C. For a long time, the COGSASH has been deflecting responsibility by claiming that it is powerless to do anything unless an actual complaint is filed. What we demand instead is a PROACTIVE BODY which accepts, among others, semi-formal complaints and attempts at non-bureaucratic, semi-formal resolutions of such complaints. Many cases of sexual harassment could not be brought to the COGSASH because the survivors did not wish to make a formal complaint. In a few cases, they did not even want official action against the sexual offender; what they wanted was that the harassment stops.
D. Once a possible case of violation has come to its notice, it should be incumbent on the COGSASH to collect the facts of the case and find out whether the affected person wishes to complain and in case the answer is negative, note her reasons. The reasons for not complaining should be discussed in the next COGSASH session; those reasons should be treated as an internal failure of the COGSASH and not an opportunity for blaming the victim; and it should be the burden of the COGSASH to figure out possible ways to remove or reduce the inhibiting factor.
E. There are a number of other debilitating features of the COGSASH which must be systematically amended or removed. For instance, a former student of the Centre could not file a complaint against a professor for the harassment she had faced while she was at the institution. It should be incumbent on the COGSASH to accommodate singular cases with no available precedent instead of dismissing them by citing reasons that belong to the realm of bureaucracy but in themselves are thoroughly irrational.
F. We feel that it is absolutely essential for COGSASH to ensure proportionate gender, caste and religion-based representation. Other ways to further strengthen the body would be to hold student elections for the committee and make students a compulsory part of the investigation committee.
G. Workshops and sensitization programmes should not merely be lip service or, worse, a means of gaining legitimacy by the institution. They must involve experienced feminists and gender rights activists who can enable free conversations between students, teachers and other constituencies of the institution.
H. We, the undersigned, feel it is necessary to urgently respond to this wake up call to the academia and appeal to fellow students from other campuses who have been struggling for justice in sexual harassment cases to come up with public statements and build solidarities in this collective struggle. We demand a public response from COGSASH and urge every stakeholder to actively participate in the discussion.
Signatories:
1. Adwitya Thapa
2. Angana Das
3. Anwesha Kar
4. Arpita Ghosh
5. Bhaswati Roy
6. Debjani Chakrabarty
7. Devi Chakrabarti
8. Dhritiman Chakraborty
9. Mohana Mukhopadhyay
10. Nasima Islam
11. Rajeswari Paul
12. Richa Gupta
13. Ritam Sengupta
14. Rohan Basu
15. Sandipan Mitra
16. Santhosh Kumar
17. Shreemoyee Chakraborty
18. Shruti Sharma
19. Sneha Manger
20. Sukruta Alluri
21. Swagata Das
22. Afrin Firdaus Idris
23. Kaberi Mondal
24. Raikamal Roy
25. Ujaan Ghosh