Something incredible happening at NLS. All student representatives have resigned. Student activities have come to a halt in protest. Widespread anger at apathy, arrogance and disrespect of students from all quarters of the administration. Did the administration make a mistake by pushing us to the brink? How will this end?

Messiah honestly doesn't care about these things. It's been his way or highway, both for the staff as well as students. He went to the extent of dismissing people who were hired without due process- you're working for 20 years and suddenly you're a temporary employee. These people challenged and got a favourable order from HC but he challenged it again before division bench.

So, ultimately, Messiah doesn't give 2 hoota about mortal.plane.

The protests do not entail skipping classes. There is no question of losing attendance. I agree that he never cared about student activities, but journal chiefs have resigned, MCS isn't holding any offerings for the foreseeable future. It will be hard for him to coordinate anything at all with the student body now, atleast we hope it will be. Plus, the admin has been burdened much more now, all the complaints go straight to them without a student intermediary attempting to fix any issue. Anything that would negatively affect students has been avoided to the extent that is possible.

The point is to show cohesion and strength as the student body, which is unprecedented. So far, student body was very disorganised and most people simply accepted that the college was the way it was. If not for anything, we know for a fact that the Messiah cares about his image and it wouldn't reflect well if something unprecedented like this were to happen. (He is particularly sensitive to stuff like this).

Outsiders now know that the student body is incredibly unhappy with him, but if he ignores this for too long, well, it is only a matter of time before someone answers the questions asking why exactly the student body is unhappy. Most of our reasons are mundane, yes, but show how he is unreasonable. But some of it is sensitive, and personal to some students, and shows how the admin stoops very low sometimes. None of it will paint him in a positive light for sure.

Guys, Let's not settle for anything less than our demands! Don't accept the student-faculty team bait under any circumstances. Nothing tangible ever came out of those student-faculty bodies. If he does not accept our demands, we go for Sit-in protests.

More than 130 student reps resigned. Mind you, most of them are elected and can probably bring in a few more people with them in case things escalate.

Revolution 2024!

Well, multiple but just to give you a sense of things:

Context:

For anything and everything, student reps have been tossed from one office to another. For example, even for getting one day's extension because there was a wifi blackout on campus, student reps had to first go to the IT dept, Academic Admin Dept, UG Chair, Programme Chair, Director of Campus and Residential Life, Registrar, and ultimately the request was turned down.

Similarly, people in charge do not have any power at all, the Supreme Leader can cancel arbitrarily. For example, Saurabh Bhattacharya (UG Chair) promised to get classes that are clashing with day Z rescheduled to next week for the current 5th year and 3rd year of 3-year LLB. However, he could not do it because Sudhir did not agree.

We propose that every office should have proper jurisdiction and should have real power, they should not have to consult the VC before allowing a student to go to the washroom. Only in exceptional circumstances should the VC step in and not for regular internal events. Or, if he can't delegate power then he should meet student reps. Presently, you need to beg for a month for getting a single meeting with him. Basically, if you go to the DCRL/UG Chair for a problem, they will most certainly say that they will have to consult the VC. This should not happen and if it has to happen then the one having the problem should be allowed to meet him in person and discuss the problems.

This is just one of the demands. I provided the context for better understanding.

Wow. This is very mature of the students. And the VC isn't allowing classes to be rescheduled even on recruitment date? FFS, this is why one should actually get VCs who actually have any idea about how the real world works and not those who coast through life on their godfather 's coattails. This guy is fine with breaking rules when he's the beneficiary, but not when student interests require him to be flexible.

This attack against Sudhir is malicious and misinformed, and therefore very disappointing indeed. The guy comes from a working class background and has made it in life. Not everyone who goes to Oxford has been to school at Eton, you know... if he had, he wouldn't need a scholarship - hint, think Rhodes - that covers tuition and maintenance funds to read law at the graduate level there.

Universities and their administrations don't act in loco parentis to their students. That's not their job, and specifically not his job. His job is to ensure that the students who pass through that university of his are the very best practicing lawyers/industry professionals, academic lawyers etc. that they can possibly be. That might sometimes involve (i) telling students (and staff) what they don't want to hear; (ii) being strict; and (iii) not compromising on the essentials (in the language of a trade union for professors at UK universities called the UCU, not starting 'a bonfire of academic standards'). Tell me how he has failed on any one of these counts and I will listen. Yes, there was NLAT (therefore almost satisfying no. 3), but that was four years ago, and I think he learned his lessons from that; I can't recall anything else he has done which shows him reducing academic standards. If anything, he is clamping down on malpractice!

please name someone unqualified who has been appointed to an academic position. do you even know how hiring is done? there is an interview panel for every single position and people are scored on various criteria and a decision is made collectively by the panel- even for ad hoc appointments. For permanent appointments there are external interviewers and a much bigger panel that follows very strict criteria.

Completely missed the point. I feel so much sympathy for Sudhir, for having to deal with students like you, who can't even be successful at cherrypicking arguments and being disingenuous. The point I am making is that he does not come from an elite background. There. Expressed it in as simple language as I possibly can. Happy?

Does Sudhir's marking criteria for exams include "ability to draw false equivalences" and "ability to be an idiot (to put the foot in the mouth) in an attempt to be disingenuous"? If the exam marking criteria does include these, you would be top of the class.

If you actually look at that infamous (for me it should be famous) India Today Conclave video where Sudhir called out bullshit, he specifically said that he '[didn't] want to talk' about what 'other universities' (which would, naturally, include Oxford and Columbia) were or weren't doing, because the hard-to-hear message he was putting out was that the nonsense that the other so-called 'university leaders' were spouting was just that, nonsense, and that if they thought that was the way to emulate Oxford and Columbia, that was wrong; as you are anyway not doing the job of learning from or emulating the best universities of the world correctly, please don't claim to be, and therefore, let's not talk about them, he said. I don't know what that indicates to a determined Sudhir-hater, but that indicates someone who wants to do the precise opposite of name-dropping to me.

To be honest, he is right. You shouldn’t get to call yourself a National University, just because you have the term “All India/ National “ in your name. Nujs is basically a state university now, that is misleading recruiters and students alike. To find out more just google “VC NUJS (News)”.

Nobody is saying what MP Singh did was right (from the point of view of bending the rules). However, in order to get to a good state of things from an awful one, we sometimes need to do things that are not-so-good. In order to get to a place where an Oxford DPhil and a publication profile that leaves a certain amount to be desired doesn't mean you have the red carpet rolled out for you, you need to have first someone with an Oxford DPhil in charge somewhere good with an established reputation (criteria happily satisfied by NLSIU). Would it have been better, perhaps, if MP Singh to have told Sudhir to gain some more experience before putting out the red carpet? Maybe. But as Forsyth says, hindsight is a much less valuable gift to have, than the more precious and valuable one, foresight. Overall, therefore, it would be dangerous to regard MP Singh's actions as some sort of precedent, but I think it did more good than harm.

No one is thinking on anyones behalf. If students here see thinking and reasoning as weapons I don’t know what to do anymore.

People don’t have to accept your characterisation fo any dispute as a golden truth. People get to decide among themselves if free grades , cheating on term papers and attendance fudging are reasonable or legitimate asks.

people cant decide for themselves until theyre exactly in your particular shoes? So only you can know whats going on- and so only you can be right about something? this is illogical to the extreme. Youll be a very poor lawyer if you cannot imagine or apprehend that other people might have different opinions and reasons and interpretations of facts than you. And your knee jerk response is to say they cant be right because theyre not you.

extreme stand point epistemology. "No one can tell me I'm wrong because no one else has lived my life" is not a convincing argument. Reasonable adults can see facts and decide what they make of it. Instead of just vaguely alleging there are facts that make you right- you would be better off actually telling us what those facts are or what information you have that outsiders dont.

Nobody is "thinking on his behalf". We are wasting time with people like you - giving up parts of our evenings no less - because the privilege of being Sudhir is that he doesn't need to. We, however, as we still have much to learn and believe he is the one who can provide us with a significant number of opportunities for learning and be a key source for some of that learning himself, need to get little pieces of filth like you out of the way first, so we can (unlike you) actually achieve something in life.

How does it harm those interests? As somebody has previously said, flexibility in some matters is fine, but not in the ones that are being asked for here. Therefore, the ball is now in your court: prove/demonstrate how his decisions to make the curriculum more academically rigorous harms the institution and its interests.

Let us be clear about the question being asked: we all want NLSIU to be in the top rank of law schools, not just in the region, the country or in Asia, but in the entire world, alongside the likes of Oxbridge, LSE/UCL/KCL, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, NYU, ANU and NUS. If NLS can do that, it is not just NLS's success, it is India's success. The argument of the Sudhir defenders is that he is taking us closer to that goal. How would you and your strategies accomplish that and what would you do differently, making sure that you understand that your strategy must create a world where the top three law schools (in order) are Oxbridge/Harvard/Yale and NLSIU?

we've told you- bringing back academic rigor, more private funding, better faculty across the board, reviving defunct journals and research clusters and centres, more collaborative projects with governments and with other universities. setting out a vision for how the university can grow.

Professionalising it (e.g., not massaging the backsides of recruiters by sacrificing academic standards, polishing the online profile of NLSIU by making the website, among other things, properly accessible to screen reader technology, unlike the Sarkari websites of other places, e.g. NUJS); introducing degree options (LLB degree courses of various lengths, like you see at many UK law schools); strengthening (again what the UK law schools call) the 'quality assurance frameworks/processes' (damn, what a distasteful-sounding phrase in this context, 'quality assurance'!) for marking and electives; hiring top-quality faculty; hosting world-renouned research events such as the Oxford HRH conference.

A law school's job is to teach its students, not to dance to the whims of a recruiter. Therefore, educational activities (teaching and assessment) come first, everything else comes afterwards. I don't know how this is even a question, or has ever been. Sudhir is showing the minimal level of competence as an administrator by making sure that this is no longer something which is up for debate.

You want ‘Harvard of the East’? Well, I think you are getting pretty close to Harvard of the East by Sudhir’s completely justified strictness on this point. You do know that the actual Harvard Law School’s Office of Career Services has gotten this (that classes etc. comes first) down in writing in their official recruitment policies? Even people there whose job requires them to primarily worry about students’ jobs in one of the world’s best law schools have understood this. See quoted extract from their regulations below:

E. Interviewing Time Guidelines

1.No Interviewing During Class Times

Employers scheduling interviews directly with students must not schedule interviews at times that conflict with classes. Interviews scheduled by OCS are assigned at times that do not conflict with classes. Similarly, students are not permitted to interview during their scheduled class times.

2.Summer Interviews

Employers are expected to schedule summer interviews at times that do not conflict with students’ internship and work obligations. Similarly, employers are strongly encouraged to offer interviews via videoconferencing and other technology where possible. (See Harvard Law School Office of Career Services, Employer Recruiting Policies and Guidelines, S. II E)

Available online at: https://hls.harvard.edu/ocs/about-ocs/employer-recruiting-policies-and-guidelines/#content

Harvard can afford doing that because A. recruiters want to take people from there and they can afford to be choosy. NLSIU no longer can. And B. Harvard admin does plenty of things to facilitate recruitment, unlike NLSIU admin. Whatever recruitment happens here is despite Sudhir and not because of Sudhir.

If he cares that less about students making money, then he shouldn't keep charging them more money every year.

No. I meant least prioritised. If you allow students to miss classes and skip coursework because they want to play sports, attend music festivals, do their extra curricular competitions, because they have a headache, they have a cold, they have the grumpies, because some recruiter wants interviews on his schedule- then youre essentially saying academics and coursework are the least prioritised activity on campus. You should learn to read.

exceptional people will be found in every scam university in this country. That doesnt mean we start off a race to the bottom.

There are olympic medal winners who didnt have access to equipment or proper training or anything- just the village around them putting in money to buy basic equipment. But if the country wants to dominate at the olympics the way that the US does- you need to invest money and time to spot talent, train athletes and bring about discipline across the board. Not doing that- actually wastes a lot of human potential and talent.

Every year maybe one or two toppers from 10-12 law schools apply to be rhodes scholars- im talking about serious applications that can get shortlisted. That number is really sad. It should be five times as much. Because there is that much talent among the law students across the country. Most people who can win those scholarships and can produce the kind of work are not incentivised to do so by a system that encourages mediocrity. they arent given the tools to even be in the running because law schools encourage short cuts and corruption in academic work, because weak administrators would rather hand out sops like free attendance and free marks than challenge their students to be better.

What sudhir is doing- that is going to make him unpopular in the short run, but its good for the country in the long run.

I don't know how this is a debate, but Sudhir indeed is a patriot, and, if I may quote Hagrid (I know references to J.K. Rowling are controversial in these times), "a thumpin' good'un". He chose to come back to a country which frankly isn't a fantastic environment for people like him (or for quite a lot of people, if we think about it), but he chose to. He made a deliberate choice, when the world was his oister, to come back to the toxicity, the trolling and other nonsense that was (and remains) the best the country can offer to its talented citizens.

In case you haven't read about his career, he taught at Buckingham (I believe prior to his DPhil), Columbia (if I remember right, after he completed his DPhil) and his own postgrad uni, Oxford itself (if I am not wrong, during his DPhil). That, combined with his teaching experience at NLSIU immediately after completing the BCL and prior to Buckingham, would have been a good enough profile to have allowed him to have taken up the option of never coming back, never having to experience the bullying of students who think they can take any old liberty they like (FFS, setting off fireworks in his office at NUJS!) and him never having to give his family members 'the talk', warning them that there's some pretty ugly stuff about him online if they look him up, all of which is untrue and deeply malicious.

You keep shifting goals ! This is getting stupid!

You asked if he had turned down jobs elsewhere to come back to India - yes he has. You say it’s about policies he’s making - when those policies are defended then it’s about his character . When his character is defended then it’s about policy. How does he bully you ? By being strict ? Imposing rigorous academic standards ? That’s just life mate. If your boss asks you to work on tight deadlines tomorrow will you think he’s being a bully?

I’m going to quit this conversation now because it literally is turning into an argument with a toddler.

Wow! You definitely need to be taught something about asking/phrasing specific questions! Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the ability to articulate a good question a key attribute of a minimally competent lawyer? Maybe, just maybe, you do have something to learn from Sudhir! My suggestion? Go find out!

If he could make cogent and convincing arguments, then he could have convinced the students about his perspective. As for myself, if I'm clearing all my exams and getting good grades under Sudhir's regime, and still being unable to frame arguments deemed acceptable by you, then you should blame the regime.

I agree. the first day of university as a Rhodes scholar- you get invitations from big companies to parties which is their way of offering you fancy high paying jobs. Anyone who comes back to trawl in the muck of indian academia is by definition a patriot. You can still dislike sudhir for any number of reasons- but he is a patriot.

There is a recruiter comment right here. As you can't seem to be able to put in even the basic effort to try and read (which shows why it is right for Sudhir to be failing you), I have pasted the text of it below - use your browser's find/search on a webpage function for the purpose of finding the word 'dick' (not in quotes) if you want to make sure that someone has written the comment whose text is given right below this line of text:

Only students who are worried about jobs think that recruiters must be appeased and catered to like they are modern day kings. These people are professionals who are recruiting other professionals. If you made a schedule that worked for the university and for them there is no reason for them to be offended. Those of us who have been working for a while know this already. We know that flagellation and brown-nosing isnt what makes us hire from a university or hire particular candidates or not. Its what we have a requirement for, and how can we get reliable smart people who can do the job we need them to.

Sudhir didnt cooperate with all these crazy demands like condoning attendance for interviews- what happened? did firms walk out of your day zero? of course they didnt. because its not some dick measuring contest about who is the bigger boss. its just about scheduling and everyone getting their work done.

PS: You can see clearly that the writing style of the above-pasted comment's author is different from my own by observing the fact that the author of that comment has chosen (rightly in my view, to show how contemptible and silly this discussion is) to be less careful with her punctuation etc. than I have. This, I hope, should prove, even to someone of the meanest intelligence like you, that I didn't perform the original noble act (whose fruit is the text pasted above) of sacrificing my time to explain something that should be perfectly obvious to a bunch of obstinate mules like you who clearly don't want to understand.

what happens? nothing happens. Every student is allowed to miss some classes while still being allowed to write examination. Its only when that number goes below 75% that youre in trouble. Students who are asking for condonation for attendance are saying- I want to take my 25% for vacation, and any classes I miss in addition to that- because of recruitments or moots or illness or what have you- that I want you to condone so I can make the minimum attendance mark. Good students who try their best simply dont struggle with these problems. If youve been conscientious you will have attended enough classes that missing one or two for an interview or for something else really shouldnt hurt you. The students want to change the expectation from : students should attend all classes except in circumstances where they cant, to : students should attend only 75% and thats after accounting for every single reason for which you can excuse an absence.

Only students who are worried about jobs think that recruiters must be appeased and catered to like they are modern day kings. These people are professionals who are recruiting other professionals. If you made a schedule that worked for the university and for them there is no reason for them to be offended. Those of us who have been working for a while know this already. We know that flagellation and brown-nosing isnt what makes us hire from a university or hire particular candidates or not. Its what we have a requirement for, and how can we get reliable smart people who can do the job we need them to.

Sudhir didnt cooperate with all these crazy demands like condoning attendance for interviews- what happened? did firms walk out of your day zero? of course they didnt. because its not some dick measuring contest about who is the bigger boss. its just about scheduling and everyone getting their work done.

I’m 100% with Sudhir. Though I concede that Sudhir is arrogant and stubborn (the India Today conclave video epitomising this) let’s also remember:

- He has done a brilliant job in weeding out mediocre TLC faculty and hiring NLU alumni with good qualifications, even getting people to leave Jindal despite offering them half the salary. In his faculty hiring, he has not shown regional nepotism and hired only people from the South, which previous VCs were guilty of

-He is getting funding from private donors and alumni

- He has revamped the website and improved PR through social media: this is important in today’s day and age

- QS rankings

- He is not corrupt

Remove him and you go back to the old cabal of TLC VCs.

The fact is that many of the students are unhappy because Sudhir has stopped grade inflation and is imposing high standards in academics.

The ultimate effect has not been achieved!

Before Sudhir, the batch was of 80 students and there were less number of good faculties. Now the batch size has increased 6-7times while the number of good faculties have increased by 2-3times. You can mention 10 good faculties against 2 earlier but the number of students who have access to good faculties has reduced! For example, earlier, a student getting in NLS was sure that they will get Somu for Economics, Rahul Singh for Corp I and II, Sarasu for Fam Law I and II. Now, some people will never get the chance to sit in their class for a single hour. Most of the hirings are young foreign LLM grads with no teaching experience. For one SidChu, there are 10 new faculties who reads the ppt.

What has the money pouring in from private donors done?

Earlier, NLS used to fund moot and ADR competitions, today, forget about funding from the University, and students are not even allowed to reach out to alumni for sponsorship! How can a VC of a public University have the guts to say "I don't care if students drop out of moots for lack of money." How can someone say, "I don't care about your job" when a job is a way to economic independence and the ultimate goal for a lot of students coming off middle-class backgrounds? Can we not expect the VC to at least have a minimum bit of empathy?

The academic standard has actually reduced in his tenure, the passing criteria have become easier, and there is moderation that makes sure that your marks increase if a teacher has been strict. Look at the number of year losses during Venkat Rao's time and now. The only thing that he has done is strictly implement the attendance requirement and has shown zero empathy toward genuine student needs.

I can go on and on but let's stop here.

I do agree that the new faculties work hard but ultimately they are not good. It's absolutely not fair for a section to be taught by Somu while the other section is being taught by someone who does not understand the subject well.

I don't want to name the profs that are absolute shit. At least 1 prof that you have mentioned is hated by the majority of the students as well.

Who? SPM publishes like crazy and teaches well, Prerna is academically demanding but takes time to even mentor first years (I have personal experience), Padmini is a role model, both in her work and her activism and Sahana is genuinely one of the best teachers I have ever had.

We want to get him under control in certain aspects, none of this absolves him of the things he has pulled (which I'll refrain from mentioning for now, but students aren't idiots who wake up and decide to resign en masse)

Some of those NLU alum you mention are terrible. 0 experience, we've got situations where you have an extremely experienced prof who teaches one section, and a professor who graduated 2 years ago teaching another section. The disparities are too big to simply say different teaching methods.

I don't think you understand why students are unhappy if you think it is about grade inflation. That may be a concern for a few students, but generalising the entire student body's concerns to something that is indefensible. Harping the same lines over and over does not justify the nonsense he pulls on a regular basis

Good, at least you are talking sense on this thread. I just wish you had talked 100% sense, instead of 75%. The video you mention shows Sudhir to be an educator with values, the right ideas and, if anything, an intolerance for bullshit, rather than the adjectives you mentioned, "arrogant and stubborn". Not everything can be compromised on. As you can't do Calculus without knowing your times tables, you can't be a practicing lawyer without knowing what he beautifully calls "fundamental first principles". Alright, he's a bit too aggressive in promoting his uni, and that is feedback that should be given to him, but that comes from his (good to have) allergy for bullshit.

I think the root cause of this is a class war: Sudhir’s elitist worldview versus the students’ more mundane, ground-level needs. I refer also to Sudhir’s interview in Bar and Bench soon after taking charge, where he expressed surprise at how NLSIU now has a lot of students from small towns and non-elite backgrounds, in comparison to when he was a student. That may seem like an innocuous comment, but in my view it shows the underlying tension.

literally the comment i was responding to was fantasizing about how people with more power would be able to bully sudhir out. you cant keep changing your tune. Own your shit.

Its not equity or reason to give out free grades, free attendance, impose no rigour and basically put academics last in a university setting. I dont think sudhir is the one with the ego or the superiority complex.

You all are trying to drive the narrative relentlessly about it being Sudhir v. lazy students. While choosing to deliberately ignore the fact that the demands are also about his bad administrative decisions, including high handed behaviour that have got nothing to do with academics. Increased batch size, less funding for activities, scholarships, introduction of random new courses and diverting resources towards those, non cooperation with placement and so on. It's clear that he's out his own chamchas at work to hijack the thread.

this is such delusional conspiracy thinking. Do you really think Sudhir cares what students say on anonymous forums? Enough to tell people who work with him to go post on it? Hes far too dignified for all of that. People are defending him because they actually see what hes done and they have a (sometimes grudging) admiration for the man and its not nice to let someone get bullied online by an anonymous mob.

No one is ignoring you. We've heard what youve had to say, youve explained your concerns- people dont agree. Batch sizes need to increase. NLS cannot be this small elite island and continue to hire good professors and grow as an institution. Sudhir has brought on more private funding for research and for infra than any other VC before him. I dont see any random irrelevant new courses- public policy is a good programme. the LLB move, while unpopular with students, is a bet that will work out in the long term. Not giving you free attendance and dancing to the whims of recruiters doesnt mean that he wants his graduates to be jobless- it means his job is to prioritise academics and thats what hes doing.

Hes pretty much followed everything hes expecting of you in his career. He was a dedicated disciplined student, he did go forth and achieve a lot the university has to be proud of as an alum. He played cricket- he just didnt need to miss his work or ask for holidays for it. He did activism- again didnt need academic standards lowered for him. He did so all by balancing his time. I understand its hard- but being in the best law school in the country should be hard. It should be the hardest thing youve done so that youre prepared to be the best lawyers in the country. If you dont want that- if you dont have the drive- you should attend a more relaxed university and leave the opportunity to someone hungry for it.

As VC- hes what multipled your faculty by 300%? hes brought on several institutional collaborators for small and big research projects? Hes raised funding from alumni? Hes revived a number of what were defunct programs and journals and other initiatives and actually laid out a vision for where the university needs to go? In the last two weeks youve had professors from the best universities all over the world come to nls for like three conferences? do you think that stuff just happens? Do you think all of these faculty would have come to nls anyway without sudhirs reputation? Theyre not coming for you- theyre coming because they trust that he will build something worth their talent and labour.

I know students have short memories. Students who werent around for the previous VC's tenure can ask their seniors just how much of a tailspin the university was in when Sudhir took the reins and hes turned it around.

I dont think hes asking you to work a bit harder than he is.

Working hard means not leaving things till last minute so youre able to manage submitting multiple projects in the same semester. It means staggering your work the entire time and giving yourself buffer for when you might fall sick or have an accident.

This is basic stuff you learn to be capable of doing a job. Just because a deadline for 4 papers is 31 October doesnt mean I only begin work on the 30th or the 25th. It means I begin my work at the beginning of term, do a little everyday and stagger my work so I meet all the deadlines. Some easier projects I might even get done early and submit early, others might take longer hours and I should prepare for that.

If you are debilitatingly sick in that you need hospitalisation- you do get leave. If you are not that sick- if its an ache or a pain or a mild cold- I cannot imagine needing several days of leave for that. Take a day, eat some d cold, get back on it. That shouldnt really disrupt your work unless youve left things for the last minute. And it should be easy enough to manage those within the 25% of classes youre allowed to miss.

If youd rather not- youre free to leave the best law school in the country. Hundreds will take your place immediately. You dont get to come into an academic institution and demand that it lowers it standards to make things easier for you- thats not a right students have.

This deserves an award for 'best comment of the year'. The same people who repeatedly post this stuff assume they'll get through Oxford; not only that, they'll do well in Oxford, earn Magic Circle salaries after that and live fantasy novel lives in London. You do know that submitting four papers in one day is a standard expectation at the world's finest universities, don't you? Make up your mind: do you want NLS to be among that class of universities or not?

You'd be laughed out of the park by academics in those places. I believe that the rule is that something like 50 pages of reading is the maximum that should be set per class at NLSIU or something like that, and going over the limit should be the exception rather than the rule. Do you know that the foreign universities that you so covet as graduate destinations have no such rules, and make their students work much harder? Do you also know that many academics at Oxford - yes, Oxford - say that they aren't getting their students to work hard enough? (Fact: a video created by the Faculty of Law at Oxford of which Tarunab Khaitan was a part called 'De-mistifying Oxford' said that members of academic staff should expect that students are estimated to take thirty hours to do the preparation (reading and essay writing) for each tutorial, think about that.) A professor there once wrote that during his Oxford studies, he had gotten so used to reading an entire book in preparation for one weekly tutorial in one of his course modules, that he had developed reading speed and comprehension capabilities that allowed him to read (and properly take in, in order to write an essay on the material and discuss it thoroughly in his tutorial and in the exam) 200 pages per hour. The complain-boxes of Legally India would be toast, no, not even toast, less than the dust beneath the chariot wheels, of people like that. Is that something you really take pride in? Please think about that.

Which is a good thing, I would have thought. I am studying at the graduate level at one of the London law schools. An academic I have had a chance to work with and get to know studied law at the undergraduate level at the same uni (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) where Joseph Raz studied law as an undergraduate before going to Oxford for graduate work, and where he returned to teach for a few years after Oxford studies, before going to Oxford again (where he spent the rest of his career, pretty much) to teach, research and write. This academic in the UK who is an alumni of Raz's undergraduate uni teaches Jurisprudence to undergraduate students, and says that the reputational clout from Raz's alumni status not withstanding, the teaching he (my academic connection) encountered at Hebrew U in Jurisprudence a few years after Sudhir graduated from NLSIU was 'several degrees below awful'; my academic connection has made it his mission in life to teach Jurisprudence in a better way (to 'impart more knowledge', as he says) than what was done for him. IMV, Sudhir is doing an even greater service than my academic connection, who chose to remain in England and apply his exacting standards here, while Sudhir has chosen to go back home and clean stuff up there instead.

lol. what nonsense no? of course he is- there proper review process to weed out scam courses. Theres better teachers, theres stricter marking, theres more work thats expected from students and plagiarism and such is actually taken somewhat seriously. Of course hes doing a lot to improve educational standards.

Excuse me but no one (most students) is leaving work to last minute. Sometimes the deadlines are such that you only have 6 days to complete a work while there are 10 other work pending. Putting pressure doesn't always guarantee success. Pressure must be there but not so much that you can't even give your 100% to a work or enjoy it. And there is no simple dichotomy such as a simple headache and straight up hospitalisation. One can have serious diseases and still not be hospitalized. We don't get a condonation till we are hospitalised (mostly) and the acceptance/rejection of the same is arbitrary. And if you believe that the ones who had to sit for day zero (getting a job is both in the interest of the university and the student) don't deserve shifting of class/attendance condonation or any form of leeway, then you must think NLS students are machines. First live here, experience the same. NLS students may be replaceable but no "human" can happily survive this. There is a limit to bringing anything and everything under the garb of 'rigour' and 'working hard'. No one wants to slack off. But neither does one want to be suffering, mentally and physically.

Please. Its just not true that students are working hard in a disciplined way and still failing to get reasonable accomodations. If your illness is debilitating you should either be hospitalised or take a term off and get well and come back to university ready to attack. Its a university its not a hospital.

I dont think NLS students are machines. I think nls students are just as capable as students at the best universities in the world and they can handle the work load that you lot are asked to handle. They do more than you lot do. Are they not human? what is this learned helplessness and constantly describing oneself as incapable and unwell? If youre having a mental breakdown over having to submit first year projects- you should reconsider law school.

I'm sorry youre overwhelmed and emotionally fragile. There is a steep learning curve coming from school to university education. But it is doable. I know because people before you have done it and done it well. It wont do to expect standards to be lowered because "youre not machines". No one thinks youre machines- its just that people who have gone through the education system might have a better sense of what is doable and what is not. Take a breath- consider that no one is assigning work to first years that they dont think first years can do. Step away from social media. Clean your room, make a schedule, and stick to it.

If you do have chronic conditions there is a disability office that accomodates it the best they can- if it is entirely debilitating you should consider dropping out for a term- sorting it out- and coming back when youre ready to do university.

Nobody at NLS is setting assignments or term papers that are due within 6 days. Literally you know what rough deadlines are at the start of term because you see it in the course outline. If you only give yourself 6 days to do something- thats bad planning on your part. thats fine. but that is something you will have to try to get better at.

I am not going to even legitimise these comments with a detailed reply because clearly you guys are not from NLS - very evident from your replies. But if you think so many students are simply wrong and doing this because they can't cope or are "emotionally fragile", then honestly no argument in the world could convince you that may be there is a limit to how rigorous a degree should be.

PS - I am unsure you even know what the current level of rigour is lol.

you can be offended and huffy. But it is clear to most adults that there is more sensitivity and more fragility with young people. There are studies to show this. Its not all your fault- its part of the downstream effects of social media use among young women and the declining standards in school education.

You cannot in the same thread be arguing that Sudhir- by being who he is- by being a strict task master and not allowing free grades and free attendance and cheating is "causing harm" and at the same time argue that youre not being fragile. We all have bosses- we know that being held accountable for your work isnt causing harm- its just life.

I know what the current level of rigor is, I have taught at the university recently. It really isnt as bad as you make it out to be. Its- what 50 pages of reading for a subject every week? thats very easily doable.

its got nothing to do with misogyny and everything to do with social science. its not even contestable anymore than with web 2.0 the boys have gravitated toward video games and pornography and the girls toward social media- and both have made young people incredibly unhappy. Go read Jonathan Haidt.

Correlation between screen time and mental health is only one way of measuring that. Haidt explains this on twitter. Quoting him:
A review in Nature, by

@candice_odgers

, asserts that I have mistaken correlation for causation and that “there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness.” Both of these assertions are untrue. https://nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2…@zachmrausch

and I have been collecting the published studies on both sides since 2019, organizing them, and making them available for public viewing and commenting, in multiple Google docs available here: https://anxiousgeneration.com/resources/collaborative-review-docs… In the “social media and mental health” doc, we currently list 22 experimental studies (16 of which found significant evidence of harm) and 9 quasi-experiments (8 of which found evidence of harm. Odgers cited only the 9th one.) We also examine the many meta-analyses and review papers. I lay out the evidence for causality (not just correlation) and walk the reader through the Google doc in this post at After Babel: https://afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic… People really need to stop saying that the evidence is “just correlational.” Sure, there are a lot of correlational studies (79 in our Google doc, of which 64 found significant correlations with variables related to poor mental health.) But there are also many experiments supporting my claims of causation. I’ll write a post at http://Afterbabel.com in April responding more fully to the arguments of the skeptics (including Odgers). For now, I point interested readers to a post in which I laid out 6 problems with the way that the skeptics have conceptualized the debate: https://afterbabel.com/p/why-some-researchers-think-im-wrong… I just want to note two more problems with Odgers’ review. First: She says that I am offering a simplistic one-factor explanation: it’s social media! But I am not. My story is about two major factors (end of the play-based childhood, rise of the phone-based childhood), each of which has many components that bring a variety of harms to different children in different ways. My book is full of lists of causal pathways. There is no one causal pathway that, on its own, explains “the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt.” Yet when you add up all the different ways that the phone-based childhood is harming different kids, some of which we learned about in that Senate hearing on January 31, you end up with a lot of kids being harmed in many ways, and these many harms combined can easily explain the “large effects” even though most pathways affect only a subset of kids. Yet Odgers and the other skeptics focus intently on studies that operationalize social media in one crude way (total # of hours per day), and then correlate that number with some measure of anxiety, depression, or other mental ailment. When the correlations turn out to be around r = .15 for girls (which is actually a number we agree on, as I explain in the previous link), the skeptics conclude that this is not large enough--by itself--to explain the epidemic, so social media must be only a trivial contributor to the epidemic. This is an error caused by an overly narrow operationalization of a complex phenomenon: the radical transformation of daily life that happened for teens between 2010 and 2015. Only a sliver of the story is captured by the crude measure of “hours per day” on social media. The skeptics’ skepticism would be more compelling if they had an alternative explanation for the multi-national decline in mental health that happened in the early 2010s, but they do not. Odgers claims that the “real causes” of the crisis, from which my book “might distract us from effectively responding,” are the lingering effects of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which had lasting effects on “families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution,” who were “also growing up at the time of an opioid crisis, school shootings, and increasing unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence.” I agree that those things are all bad for human development, but Odgers’ theory cannot explain why rates of anxiety and depression were generally flat in the 2000s and then suddenly shot upward roughly four years after the start of the Global Financial Crisis. Did life in America suddenly get that much worse during President Obama’s 2nd term, as the economy was steadily improving? Her theory also cannot explain why adolescent mental health collapsed in similar ways around the same time in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, as Zach and I have shown: https://afterbabel.com/p/international-mental-illness-part-one… Nor can she explain why it also happened in the Nordic countries, which lack most of the social pathologies on Odgers’ list: https://afterbabel.com/p/international-mental-illness-part-two… Nor why it also happened in much of Western Europe: https://afterbabel.com/p/international-crisis-europe… Nor why suicide rates for Gen Z girls (but not alway boys) are at record levels across the Anglosphere: https://afterbabel.com/p/anglo-teen-suicide… I just can’t see a causal path by which America’s school shootings, lockdown drills, inequality, or racism caused girls in Australia to suddenly start self-harming or dying by suicide at the same time as American girls. In short: There is a great deal of evidence for my claims that something terrible is happening to teens in many countries, and that a major contributing factor is the sudden international arrival of the phone-based childhood. I lay out this evidence––with hundreds of footnotes––in chapters 1, 5, 6, and 7 of The Anxious Generation. I have also laid it out in many posts at http://AfterBabel.com. All along, Zach and I have “shown our work” in public Google Docs and Substack posts, and we have invited others to critique it. Zach has made supplemental files for every chapter in The Anxious Generation, which give links to the datasets and data points that he used to create the graphs in the book. We invite you to check our work: https://anxiousgeneration.com/resources/supplements-for-each-chapter… Our work has benefited from cordial, normal, academic debates with the skeptics. We will continue to welcome their critiques. But please, everyone, stop saying that the evidence is “just correlational."
Link:https://x.com/JonHaidt/status/1774571680511508601

Are you being serious ? Do you really think I’m a nazi because I think social media companies are making our young girls unhappy and anxious ? That their business model relies on young women being insecure and being focused on relationships and body image as opposed to their careers ? Are you seriously accusing me of being a nazi for that ? Hitler was a vegetarian so are all vegetarians evil then ? This is honestly disgusting and stupid.

Just because the words are changing doesn’t mean the argument is changing or the evidence is changing. Really just read Jon Haidt before you start calling people nazis. Social media companies are targeting young women to increase anxiety and insecurity. Pornography and video games are targeting young boys and keeping them from being motivated or having decent social skills. Young people across the world are falling for that because of the short term serotonin boost and not really thinking about whether the emotional fragility- anxiety and depression and learned helplessness is caused by all of this online behaviour and not because all adults are evil or because work is evil or capitalism is evil or their vice chancellor is evil.

what philosphy? hes a social psychologist. not a philosopher. He's written books that do go through an editorial process. Peer review isnt what you think of it. And hes answered questions about his methodology. I could ask questions about the methodology of any paper today- that doesnt discredit the paper itself. Many academic psychologists do take him seriously- not to mention the academic psychologists whose work he is citing and relying upon.

You can disagree with him- but ideally your disagreement should be based on thoughtful consideration. Why do you think his methodology is lacking? Why do you think his responses arent convincing?

Thats a far more interesting conversation to have than " oh well some other people have said some stuff so im gonna dismiss this guy". Its the internet- some other people will always have said some stuff.

Look mate, as somebody pointed out, you are shifting goalposts. I think you might have some refreshing to do on how to draft arguments, along with some more thinking on what constitutes a good argument. I really don't think the way you phrased your original comment was wise or responsible; if you reflect maturely, you will surely admit that (any inability on your part to not do that would be very saddening indeed). This is a better way to argue your point - not just that, a better point to make.

Read my initial comment - I clearly state “ this is not all your fault, it’s part of downstream effects of social media use”. I literally said it - it’s not my fault you cannot read.

What makes it more palatable to you is you don’t feel blamed when it’s phrased as companies doing something . But the honest fact is that it’s both companies and young people who refuse to listen to scientists and researchers and their parents and professors who might know better because their insta friends tell them how virtuous they are.

It’s like smoking. Yes tobacco companies did a lot to attract younger and younger people to cigarettes. But also if you’re coughing constantly and fatigued and you’re puking blood and your wife and kids hate it -maybe you should’ve known not to smoke three packs a day.

Instead of asking yourselves -“ why do I spend hours watching reels and have no attention span to read for class , why do I get so anxious when it comes to deadlines - what can I do to get better” - you’re trying to - on this thread - cancel the man who is bringing back some discipline to nls and trying to make sure you can be functional adults who are good lawyers. Because that is harder than spending your days spouting half learned garbage from social media and not actually working.

What makes a good argument is not how coddled your opponent might feel but how truthful and evidence based your claims are . Mine are truthful and evidence based - I’ve thought and read about this for some time.

I’m not freaking drafting some argument for a Supreme Court argument here. I wholly reject your condescension on that part- move on and go call someone else a nazi.

My argument hasn’t changed at all - the only reason you think it’s better is because you are accorded less agency and responsibility for your choices if you can just blame meta and insta instead of actually doing things to improve your situation. Learned helplessness through and through.

I hope you grow up one day to see how stupid you’ve been. But more than anything - I’m done talking with idiots about stuff we can all see. Go cancel your grandma for being a boomer.

Going by some of the other threads on this site, most law students want jobs in corporate firms. Trust me, the kind of work that NLS makes you do is just a fraction of the pressure and deadlines you will encounter in real life while working in a firm. And as much as I hated it while I was a student, I will grudgingly admit that it has helped me manage pressure in my career.

coping and thriving are different things. And I really doubt the pandemic batches are even coping when its clear they came in with learning gaps. Five years ago no one was so incensed about their boss telling them shes disappointed in them that they had a public meltdown and tried to get her cancelled. Five years ago when I was interviewing people I didnt find candidates flubbing basic contract law questions. This is new.

Social effects apply to all law schools. How different law schools are responding and their effects- it is honestly too early to tell. You will only probably be able to tell at the end of Sudhirs second term if even then. Universities are big ships and it takes a lot of time to turn one around.

The first few batches under Faizan Mustafa at NALSAR were fine. Graduates had good outcomes, even a Rhodes scholar, many going on to graduate schools, and many steadily climbing the corporate ladder. But the last few batches after FM has been at the helm for a while? Not the same thing at all.

Also, "everyone else is also bad at the law so lets not even try to get better" is not a compelling argument when youre talking about the best law school in the country.

The argument is that you have got no evidence of the fact that Sudhir's model produces better lawyers. Until you do, demanding that people put blind faith in it is not only a bad argument, but fanaticism. Especially because other models have produced all the good scholars and practitioners all across the country in the past two decades and more.