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Chanakya National Law University Vice Chancellor Professor Faizan Mustafa has argued that universities should ideally be liberating spaces that allow the students and faculty to question authority, challenge established ideas, and engage with uncomfortable propositions.

Professor Mustafa, who was earlier the Vice Chancellor of NALSAR, was speaking at an educational webinar conducted by The Hindu, focusing on the freedom of speech in law schools.

M. Kalyanaraman, who was hosting the event, began the discussion referring to the directions issued by the Bar Council of India Chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra (which were later withdrawn by him) to stop the enrolment of the outgoing batch of NALSAR students in connection with a campaign opposing the participation of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant in its convocation.

At the outset, Professor Faizan said that he did not want to comment on the actions of the Institution that he had led for 10 years. However, as far as his personal ideology is concerned–as someone who has been Vice Chancellor of public universities for 16 years–he said that the prevailing model of university governance in India is "wrong": 

"I can say that the whole model of university governance in India is wrong...So basically the universities are vice chancellor centric. Vice chancellor is a kind bride in a university and he is the one who calls the shots. So in my opinion this governance model itself is wrong". 

Reminiscing about his stint at NALSAR, Professor Mustafa said:

"And here I would like to recall that when I joined NALSAR in 2012, I had received some 42 emails from the students welcoming me to the university and each one of them had written that 'we are in prison come and liberate us'. So I experimented there what I was already doing in Cuttack (NLUO) the liberty model of administration and as the very word will signify that students on campus have to have liberty. Let me say it without any fear of contradiction that if the purpose of a university is knowledge creation, knowledge creation cannot happen in the control environment. Because for knowledge creation you require raising of questions and raising of uncomfortable questions, challenging the existing knowledge".

He said that Gurukuls which produced the likes of Aryabhat and others were not "controlled by any State". He said that there was no UGC in ancient India. He therefore stressed that the "liberty model alone will help us in creation of knowledge".

"If we really want to improve the global rankings of our universities then we have to give that freedom to the faculty to do researches in the areas they want to do research, to write whatever they want to write, to speak whatever they want and to allow students to question everything," he said. 

Speaking about his experience as a Constitutional Law teacher, he said that he would first teach his students importance of liberty, where they would then "experiment that knowledge" and his lectures against him as an administrator. "They would say, 'you only taught this now give us this liberty'," he added. 

He thus said:

"Universities should ideally be liberating spaces. Any University which is not a liberating space, it is not be good for higher education. A University has to bring the whole universe of knowledge. And that's why it is said that at times it is in the universities that the most repulsive ideas are to be talked about, are to be discussed".

He also recalled that during his early days at NALSAR, a student sent him an invite for a debate over opening of a pub inside the University campus citing several reasons including safety of students. Professor Mustafa said that the other teachers had advised him to shut down debates on such topics. He however said that he went to the debate and sat with the students and engaged with them on the topic. He said that most speakers opposed the motion which was then put to vote and voted against. 

He further said that he always says that the solution to Hate Speech is not to bring a law to curb speech, "but for hate speech also you need more speech". Coming to the topic of debate, Professor Mustafa stated that Law schools give greater freedom of speech to their students than traditional universities.

Supporting the comparatively relaxed freedom of speech in law schools, he said:

"I am absolutely clear that since law students are going to espouse the causes of others are going to defend the liberties of others. They are trained in this art of making an argument and you cannot train them in the art of argument by curbing their freedom of a speech in terms of speaking, in terms of making cartoons or in terms of you know every other expression of freedom of a speech..."

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