‘Varsities should nurture free expression’

NEW DELHI: President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday said universities should play a leading role in addressing the challenges faced by the nation, while asserting that higher education institutions should emerge as spaces that nurture free expression.

The President’s remarks come in the backdrop of violent protests and police action witnessed at Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia varsities and over the Citizenship

(Amendment) Act.

There have been protests at several other campuses across the country as well.

Addressing the closing session of the meet of vice-chancellors and directors of central universities, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERS) and Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, he said, “...It is your paramount duty to ensure that your campuses emerge as spaces that nurture free expression and ideas, where experimentation is encouraged and failure is not ridiculed but is seen as learning.”

Kovind said universities should become the laboratories for exposing students to the problems that need to be addressed in the cause of nationbuilding.

He said students should be encouraged to take up academic and extra-curricular work with a distinct community orientation. “I am aware that universities are increasingly conscious of this and taking necessary steps too. But we need to introspect whether what we are doing is enough or relevant...,” the president said. Kovind said it is imperative to fill up vacancies and attract top-quality faculty. “At the same time, you must ensure adequate gender balance in your institutes, particularly of the faculty...,” he said.