I agree with you and appreciate your critical perspective. Thanks for sharing that information regarding NLSIU. Regarding the NLSIU teacher I mentioned, my point is that he is really clutching at the straws here to justify something as destructive as group-based discrimination in the country. He is not just trying to make Indian jurisprudence on reservation coherent. He is also trying (in my view, insidiously) to make the underlying basis of reservation, which is blanket discrimination, as a moral/legitimate basis of policy. Now you are correct that he is free to do so. But my point is that he took the easy way out. He accepted the intellectual orthodoxies of his profession. It is a fact that it is practically impossible to argue in an Indian university against certain assumed positions/subjects of Indian state and society today, such as the underlying principle of reservation. I do not think the university exists solely to justify the ideational biases of the society in which it operates. It should aim for more than that.

Regarding IITD, I would request you to please consider that the faculty at their HSS department has consistently embraced the worst examples of critical theory in their academic work and pedagogy. The leading spokesperson of this is currently Prof. Dwivedi whose public pronouncements would be worth debating here if they were not so obviously born of her own partisan resentments. She had a major role in starting their new PG programme on culture, society, and thought where the faculty can now freely continue their indoctrination of students without rigor and with the stamp of an IIT, no less. They don't discuss in class what they disagree with. They simply label it as “problematic” or “misogynist” or whatever other adjective that puts others on the defensive. Those who are familiar with this pernicious critical ideology that divides humans into groups of domination and oppression can easily make out the anti-intellectualism of papers that talk about caste-based reparations or label an entire group, such as Brahmins in this case, as wholesale oppressors. There is no rigor/logic in these positions and they do not contribute to human knowledge. They confuse activism with intellect. They are just mimicking the fashions of the West because that is how a predominantly left-dominated academia rewards the groupthink of its members. Their research interests are hardly organic. In ten years, they will again borrow something from their counterparts in the West. Most of them don't even do any fieldwork to justify the outrageous claims in their publications.

You don’t seem to understand why people are making fun of it. It’s because the thesis is ridiculous.

You don’t need to read a thesis to know what jihadist groups want just like you don’t need a thesis to know what the abortion clinic bombers or westboro Baptist church or the ku klux klan want. Those are the moral equivalents of jihadists. Can you imagine someone writing a queer theory crip theory radical empathy paper about the ku klux klan ? No. Because academia has no trouble with moral relativism when it comes to white terrorists but somehow things brown terrorists are all poor little woobies.

I’m sure terrorists have friends they joke around with and share secrets with and women who find them desirable- unfortunately that doesn’t redeem them in the slightest. and I do not care about their lives because they do not care about the lives of people they harm.

You do understand ? These are not everyday Muslims. She’s specifically writing about people who describe themselves as belonging to jihadist groups.

I’m not sure I agree with you actually. IIT delhi - it’s too misleading to summarise by looking at paper titles. I’m not saying you’re wrong I’m also not saying you’re right. NLSIU- the thesis is clearly talking about electoral representations. Would you rather electoral representations be based on this model of group competition for limited resources ? Or on the model of recognition? He’s trying to bring some order to a runaway train. Of course the idea that quotas for specific groups is the way to provide representation - that people really go through the world as groups and not individuals is worth querying - maybe he does that in this thesis. Or maybe he doesn’t. In either case I think the demand for electoral caste quotas has been around for a hundred years now- it’s not going to go away in how we run the republic. We might as well figure out some principle for it so we can apply it fairly.

This isn’t to say nls folks don’t write crazy stuff. Two articles in the last month about non binary. One that was titled “ the president is female you are female everyone is female” it’s all utter nonsense. There’s a course being taught right now by someone has continuously terrible takes like the existence of sea horses proves human men can get pregnant. And they’ve invited that buffalo fellow in the past because he rose to fame bullying Savarna women who dumped his whiny incel ass.

NLS needs to seriously reconsider the kinds of electives it’s offering. And if they are rigorous enough. It seems like there’s an informal quota system with At least 1-2 courses every term on gender, at least 1-2 courses on caste, 1 course or maybe two if you’re lucky on private law. To be fair there are always a couple of what seems like rigorous courses on constitutional law. But identity is not the only prism through which we can see the world. There are very few elective courses that deal with class , labour, technology, medicine, regulation etc and even few that would take an interdisciplinary / philosophical approach to studying categories like crime, evidence, corporation etc.

Do your students need courses every single term on queer theory ? Is that because your students don’t study or are stupid or because your teachers don’t know anything else or because ideological indoctrination requires repetition ?

And I don’t think it would be indoctrination if these courses were rigorous and seriously dealt with opposing view points. But just looking at how the courses are constructed - and who they are taught by- it’s clear that there are no big debates or questions expected. Only conformity. I would be surprised if these teachers could even articulate the opposing points of view with any fairness let alone actually counter them.

The law school once had a vibrant atmosphere where people disagreed with each other about everything and still were friends, where you expected verbal fisticuffs and drama in the classroom. That’s the environment that raised a Sudhir and an Arun and a Mrinal and a Chauhan. It would be a shame for that to go away because young faculty with ideological blindspots are being entrusted with too much responsibility.

Correct. Someone wrote a JNU sociology PhD thesis on the cartoon porn character Savita Bhabhi. He used it to bash the BJP and Hindutva for having patriarchal constructs of how cartoon bhabhis should behave (ie denying cartoon bhabhis agency by expecting them to care for their cartoon children, instead of letting them screw with the cartoon milkman, cartoon tailor, cartoon plumber, cartoon courier delivery boy and any other cartoon man wise who rings their doorbell).

Not kidding. This was the actual thesis. The guy got a fellowship abroad, I think.

Speaking of Indian universities, please read this comment and judge for yourself the value of their ongoing academic work << https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/421720-niall-ferguson-in-todays-times-london-russel-group-universities-are-copying-woke-cancel-culture-and-dei-from-ivy-leagues-and-stifling-free-speech#comment-422609 >>.

Um.. ISIS killed Yazidi babies, boiled their corpses and made their mothers eat it. Can “queer theory” and “crip theory” explain why it’s “reductionist” and “imperialist” to see such people and monsters and why we should instead appreciate the “complexity of their lived experience”?

https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/archives/inhuman-isis-militants-trick-mother-2115204

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/yazidi-woman-freed-by-idf-from-gaza-reveals-isis-forced-them-to-eat-babies-6829920/amp/1

I'm so glad someone else on here follows colin wright. thesis is ridiculous. Academia is making itself into a joke. Does she know what jihadist groups would do to someone who talks about queer theory? There is something called suicidal empathy and this is it.

And honestly the problem is not contained to foreign universities. Its shocking to me how much money public universities in a poor country like india are wasting on this kind of nonsense too.

Abstract:

This dissertation is an article compilation thesis that explores the possibility of producing humanistic social science in general, using the case of conducting research on jihadist group members within the 'War on Terror' context. Empirically, the study employs first-hand interviews of jihadist group members in France. It finds that employing queer theory, crip theory, and affect theory to analyze both participants' lived reality and the way one ought to produce knowledge provides novel insights. Challenging reductionist narratives that frame jihadist group members as deviant or monstrous, it argues for nuanced interpretations that account for their complex lived experiences. The dissertation proposes to focus on intimacy-romantic relationships, friendships, and familial bonds— as the locus of projection and assignation of monstrosity as well as a space of agency and autonomy for the subjects of study. The theoretical framework presented therein advocates for de-exceptionalizing these actors and introduces critical (re)contextualization as a tool for ethical scholarship. This perspective situates jihadist group members as individuals inscribed in modernity whose aspirations and struggles often mirror broader and banal societal dynamics. Considering the question of how to concretely produce knowledge in this field, the thesis critiques the emotional and affectual regime prevalent in terrorism studies, advocating for data-gathering methods that consider both the researcher's and subject's inherent human vulnerability and agency. The dissertation concludes by urging scholars to critically examine how the War on Terror perpetuates colonial and imperial legacies in the way one produces knowledge, advocating for a justice-oriented - and tangible —humanistic sociological practice, one which ought to resist dehumanizing narratives. The dissertation proposes playfulness and metaphor as epistemological interventions, provoking readers to embark on a journey of exploring surprising parallels, revealing the narrow parameters confining pre-existing scholarship. This work ultimately provides a humanistic model for engaging with subjects in politically charged contexts, emphasizing unconditional empathy and care for all as an imperative ethical minimal threshold in sociology and beyond.

https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/publication/cdaafd34-53ca-4d27-920a-a5750b0ec258

https://x.com/SwipeWright/status/1899713972221186189