Students urge Harvard to sever ties with Subramanian Swamy

Washington, Jul 28 (PTI) Upset over his recent article
on Islamic terrorism in an Indian newspaper, a group of
Harvard students are urging the varsity authorities to sever
ties with the Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy, who
teaches economics at this prestigious University every summer.
"We demand that the Harvard administration repudiate
Swamy's remarks and terminate his association with the
University," says a petition campaign launched by students of
the Harvard University.
The petition posted on the website of the Harvard
University and signed by more than 240 students, faculty and
post-doctoral fellows, so far, says that they are outraged to
learn that Subramanian Swamy, whose recent editorial shows him
to be a bigoted promoter of communalism in India, also teaches
economics at Harvard University Summer School.
Swamy teaches Economics S-110: "Quantitative Methods in
Economics and Business" and Economics S-1316: "Economic
Development in India and East Asia".
Donald H Pfister, Dean of the Harvard Summer School has
said that the school will examine the issue.
"At this point we have only a basic awareness of the
situation and have not been contacted by the organizations
involved," Pfister was quoted as saying by 'The Harvard
Crimson'.
"Professor Swamy is a long-time member of the Harvard
Summer School faculty who previously was a member of the
Department of Economics here. We will give this matter our
serious attention," Pfister was quoted as saying.
Swamy, however, told the Crimson that the Indian
response to his op-ed has been positive.
"I don't think anyone in India, except the left wing,
has been upset by my article. There has been wholesale
support," he said.
Writing in the wake of the July 13, 2011, bombings in
Mumbai, Swamy has exploited this event not only to promote a
vision of Indian society based on Hindu supremacy, but to
disparage and cast suspicion on the entire Muslim community in
India.
"Muslims of India," he states, "are being programmed by
a slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into
suicide against Hindus," the petition said.
"While free expression and the vigorous contest of ideas
are essential in any academic community, so, too, are respect
and tolerance for human difference.
By advocating measures that would grossly violate
freedom of religion and the unqualified right to vote for
different religious groups, and by aggressively vilifying an
entire religious community, Swamy breaches the most basic
standards of respect and tolerance," the petition said.
"More specifically, Swamy's comments cast doubt on his
ability to treat a diverse community of students with fairness
and respect.
The highly insulting and stereotypical nature of his
comments suggest that he cannot be trusted to regard Muslims
-- and no doubt other groups--with anything but a jaundiced
eye," it said.
"Swamy's views are deeply offensive; they are also
dangerous. The measures he proposes--far out of step with the
everyday secularism and tolerance embodied by most
Indians--would threaten to tear apart the basic fabric of
India's pluralist democracy.
And, as Indians know too well, the brand of rhetoric
that he employs has fueled violence against religious
minorities in the past," the petition said, adding that Swamy
can have no place in the Harvard community.
"These are statements you'd expect a demagogue on the
extreme right to say, but a professor who comes here, who got
his Ph D from Harvard?"
Umang Kumar, a student at Harvard Divinity School, was
quoted as saying by The Harvard Crimson.
Kumar and Sanjay J Pinto, a Ph D candidate in sociology
and social policy, organized the petition with a small group
of peers and then emailed it out to an initial group of 80
students, Crimson said. PTI LK