Written by: Shibashis Chatterjee5 min readApr 28, 2026 06:11 PM IST First published on: Apr 28, 2026 at 06:11 PM ISTAs a teacher of social science, I see the current difficulties faced by the humanities and social sciences as more than just a “relevance crisis”. For people like me who grew up intellectually within the ethos of Jadavpur University (JU), where dissent was not merely tolerated but cultivated as part of learning, the evolving narrative feels far more unsettling. What, then, is the point of a university? In a recent election rally, our Prime Minister juxtaposed the idea of an “academic atmosphere” with what he termed “chaos” within the university — an image that evokes protest, threat, and ideological perversion. He also described JU — where I teach — as a place of “anarchy” that needed “saving”.These tidings make perfect political sense in a supercharged electoral atmosphere, yet they reveal a deeper unease with nonconformist knowledge and forms of expression that resist order, discipline, and instrumental productivity. Those of us who went to JU were socialised in a pedagogical culture where disagreement was treasured rather than suppressed in the name of discipline. Such closure is tragic and ethically disturbing. I am saddened that our Prime Minister used the university in a political campaign speech. For those of us who experienced JU as a place where authority could be questioned without fear of retaliation, autonomy was the bedrock of our intellectual life.AdvertisementAlso Read | Yogendra Yadav writes: In the West Bengal election, SIR and the anatomy of exclusionTraditionally, we defended ourselves by asserting that the humanities and social sciences foster creativity, critical thinking, and democratic values. They enable students, employees, and teachers to take pride in self-reflection, question power structures, and navigate ethical uncertainty without fear of recrimination. These claims remain valid. Yet for those who have lived through classrooms where argument was an ethic and dissent a method, the present moment signals something more alarming: the shrinking legitimacy of dissent itself. When dissent must justify its own existence, and protest is no longer read as a sign of democratic health, but as disorder, something deeper is at stake.We teach students at Jadavpur not to look for immediate economic gains or quantifiable results, but to build critical capacities that allow them to make judgments without the pressure to reach mechanical consensus on complex issues. The campus encourages the search for philosophical roots across genres, emphasising the virtues of cultivating “intrinsic value” over direct utility. The humanities are not meant to deliver immediate results; they seek to illuminate the human condition. In the modern university, however, this vision is increasingly overshadowed by another logic — one centred on efficiency, employability, and impact measured in numbers.This technocratic turn intersects with political discourse about universities in deeply troubling ways. Portraying student protests as evidence of institutional failure implicitly shrinks the space for critical engagement. The university is recast not as a site of contestation, but of order. However, this perspective clashes with JU’s historical reputation for intellectual questioning, political involvement, and a broadly critical attitude to life. For generations of students and teachers at Jadavpur, sharp disagreement was not chaos. It was a sign of active minds engaging with the status quo, questioning it, and imagining how to change it. Seeking “order” in such situations without recognising the value of disagreement misinterprets the essence of a university and risks conflating dissent with disruption, critique with threat, and politics with violence.AdvertisementI am in no way in favour of anarchy or chaos, nor do we advocate abandoning institutional stability. The attraction of Jadavpur was that even indefensible radicalism would ultimately be rejected by the majority of stakeholders, while preserving the vibrancy of resistance to unjustified hierarchical power. Having inhabited such a space, I can vouch for the fact that meaningful dissent is most effective when it operates within norms of dialogue and responsibility.While the humanities do not train minds for specific jobs, they are essential to the very conditions that give any job meaning. When rules become claustrophobic, they urge us to question them; when hierarchies become insensitive, they demand ethical scrutiny; and in moments of crisis, they make us aware of history and the everyday meanings of life. The social sciences enable societies to negotiate difference and are vital to democratic life.you may likeUltimately, we must ask whether we want to live in a world where utility is the only accepted measure of value. If universities become environments of managed thought — where dissent is constrained, and outcomes are narrowly defined — there will be no room for criticality. If we believe that some forms of knowledge are valuable precisely because they question, interpret, and disturb, then the defence of the humanities is inseparable from the defence of intellectual autonomy.In this sense, the present moment is more than just a crisis for the humanities and social sciences. Jadavpur’s nationalist history and liberal outlook have long prized dissent not only as a mode of learning but as a way of life. The current crises, which marginalise social and aesthetic concerns and allow political leaders to intervene more aggressively, challenge our commitment to sustaining critical, reflective, and sometimes uncomfortable thought — thought that is essential to the very purpose of the university.The writer teaches at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and was the Eugenio Lopez Visiting Chair at the Department of International Studies and Political Science at Virginia Military Institute, US