Dear JLGS,

I'm an alumni of the law school. For godsake, please get serious about your hiring and promotions policy. When Oishik Sircar, who has been a full professor for so many years at JGLS, joins Melbourne Law as Senior Lecturer (2 ranks below), and when Debolina Dutta (who has been an Associate Professor at JGLS) joins Melbourne as only a Postdoctoral Fellow, and when Ashrita Prasad Kotha, who was an Associate Professor at JGLS even before her PhD joins NLSIU as Assistant Professor after her PhD, you know that your promotion policies are a joke and way below international as well as national standards.

I love all of these people I just mentioned. They are great teachers and exceptional scholars. But your promotions of them, like ALL of your promotions, follow some weird logic. Look at NLS or NUS, with their rigorous benchmarks. You are doing nobody a favour with subpar policies, only embarrassing yourself.

I recently heard of a story where an Associate Professor of JGLS wanted to go for a PhD to a foreign institution and their prospective supervisor would be an assistant professor of the university. Do you see how ridiculous this is? We have become a joke in most circles.

Regards,

An embarrassed alumni

1. Your otherwise excellent appeal is only slightly undermined by the fact you began the body of this post with saying "JLGS" instead of "JGLS".

2. Regarding the two faculty who went to Australia, are you sure they would have gone two ranks down if they had been moving to another Indian university (even NLSIU)? Sure, there is stuff to blame JGLS for in this - don't get me wrong! But still...

More often than not, typos are merely a consequence of typing quickly and frequently on a small screen. It is not a sign of illiteracy that some make it out to be. The author of the main comment has argued with facts and logic and that is far more relevant here than an odd awkward turn in a sentence.

Why this embarrassment????

Law school students in India can celebrate and become ecstatic when someone gets the "Roads" Scholarship, knowing very well that this award is in the honour of someone who has furthered British colonial interests with serious and consistent human rights violations. Even the VC of NLS is in this group - isn't it? Celebrating this should be a matter of national shame. After all, we don't celebrate the Victoria Cross winners in India.

Why can't the same law schools set and use their criteria for faculty promotions? Why should they care about alumni and their supposed embarrassment?

There are several pressing issues leading to this:1. Declining quality of new faculty appointment: The overall quality of new faculty members has been alarmingly substandard. The Jindal-foreign LLM-jindal lecturer pipeline is getting more and more real. While this trajectory benefits the lecturers—since, as freshers they will not be paid that high in any other law college in India. But, it also makes the whole joke that Jindal will take any Rahul, aryan or aditya with a foreign LLM degree true. It raises concerns regarding the overall faculty expertise and diversity of academic backgrounds.

2. Admin intervention: The university admin has been exerting increasing control over academic matters, leading to a significant curtailment of both academic freedom and freedom of expression. This interference may, in part, be attributed to a certain someone joining a certain party. Ex. recent backlash over linkedin posts and disciplinary action on professors (seriously?!?).

3. Allocation of subjects: Beyond elective courses, where faculty members generally have the freedom to teach subjects aligned with their interests, there exists little autonomy in the assignment of core courses. Professors are frequently required to teach subjects outside their primary areas of expertise. For instance, known ADR-expert professor teaching Evidence. Or a company law professor (who did not in-fact know company law), now teaching environment law (who again cannot teach environment law). And we had foreign faculties who were devoid of any Indian legislation expertise teach environment law. This I think is the biggest issue, because at the end of the day, students do not take elective courses that seriously and core courses are not taught properly either.

I may have grammar errors or typo errors but this is a gossip site guys lmao duck it we ball.

Former JGLS faculty here. You raise a valid question which I think is the back of the mind of all faculty who try to make the shift abroad. I had no idea students and alumni were thinking about it. Let me breakdown a few potential reasons (some of which you have identified).

1. The promotion system is a joke:

There is no set criteria for promotions - ranks are often subject to favouritism/negotiation. I know exceptional academics who were offered positions which I believe were one rank lower than they deserved during the recruitment process. You will also see faculty being promoted without a substantial body of scholarship but solely for their administrative roles/appeasing the institution. ▮▮▮ is one such faculty who I believe benefited from implementing some highly questionable policies towards students which did not take their best interests into consideration. I urge you to do a quick search on Google Scholar for his academic work - you will find no publications and no citations.

Then there is the question of foreign faculty. JGLS wants to maintain a foreign faculty ratio - which is one of the metrics for the ranking systems in place. Some foreign faculty would have no chance even getting to academia in established universities abroad. Sure some have an academic interest in India but others are quite frankly unemployable elsewhere.

2. Biases in Recruitment at Overseas Universities

Universities in the West rarely value Indian qualifications or work experience. The two scholars you mentioned are well respected, but ultimately it is not an even playing field.

3. Willingness to Compromise on Rank

Ultimately, many of us are willing to compromise on rank if we get a position at a decent university overseas. There are so many factors at play: salaries (a postdoc overseas can earn more than a senior academic in India); the administration being a mess (random teaching allocations and more favouritism); comparatively less resources (research grants for example); teaching loads; and of course - quality of life and Sonipat (I would love to work in a metro - but there can be a major gap in salaries at national law unis vs private unis).

Curious what your thoughts are about ranks of professors at JGLS v/s their teaching abilities in the classroom (obv just one factor in being a solid academic).