Delhi University - FYUP bias in teacher hiring?
Applicants for vacancies in Delhi University's departments—especially English and history—have complained of the way in which interviews were held. They say published work wasn't examined, questions irrelevant to their fields were asked and, in many cases, interviews were conducted entirely in Hindi.
Some of the strongest detractors of the four-year undergraduate programme have come from English and History departments. Teachers see it as payback for taking a stand against FYUP and feel it has influenced the decision of the selection committees. A group of teachers from the history department have written to the vice-chancellor.
At the interview, Jenny Rowena discovered she had to know Hindi to teach English in DU. Rowena, an English teacher at Miranda House, is from Kerala. "The Pro-VC asked questions in Hindi. When I told him I can't understand, he said, 'Aapko samajhna chahiye'." She was also asked why she'd bothered with Malayalam cinema—her PhD thesis is on it — as it's not literature. "Another candidate told me they'd been asked to translate Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' into Hindi."
It's not just DU teachers who are angry. Mohammad Sajjad, a history teacher at Aligarh Muslim University, describes the interview as a "catwalk". His blog post reads, "Majority of people were neither allowed to distribute their CVs, nor were they allowed to show their publications. "Haan baantna hai to baant dijiye; apni kitabein kyon dikhaiyega phir sametney mein diqqat hogi (distribute it if you want to, why would you show your books? It will be difficult to collect them back)" was their utterance." He was also asked if he knew Persian even though his area of expertise is late-colonial and post-Independence India. "This was not a board of experts. They didn't know anything about any discipline and weren't interested. My interview lasted all of four minutes," says another applicant.
Another history candidate says, "All questions were from the Pro-VC who isn't from my discipline. My colleagues said 'You've spoken against FYUP, what did you expect ?'"Seven teachers from the history department wrote to the VC about their colleague, Anshu Malhotra, being denied promotion. Currently an associate professor, she'd applied for the post of professor under the Career Advancement Scheme.
"Unless the academic criteria for promotion...has changed, there seems to be no reason for denying promotion," says the letter. "There is, however, some cause for apprehension that the reason for denial may be the unease that the DU administration seems to have reagarding the department of history, based on the fact that members of this department had publicly voiced their reasoned critique of the FYUP. That a teacher of the calibre of Dr Anshu Malhotra should have been treated in this manner is shocking, and casts doubt on the integrity of the selection process."
Attempts were made to contact the VC— he neither received calls nor replied to text messages.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/FYUP-bias-in-teacher-hiring/articleshow/30877971.cms
Some of the strongest detractors of the four-year undergraduate programme have come from English and History departments. Teachers see it as payback for taking a stand against FYUP and feel it has influenced the decision of the selection committees. A group of teachers from the history department have written to the vice-chancellor.
At the interview, Jenny Rowena discovered she had to know Hindi to teach English in DU. Rowena, an English teacher at Miranda House, is from Kerala. "The Pro-VC asked questions in Hindi. When I told him I can't understand, he said, 'Aapko samajhna chahiye'." She was also asked why she'd bothered with Malayalam cinema—her PhD thesis is on it — as it's not literature. "Another candidate told me they'd been asked to translate Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' into Hindi."
It's not just DU teachers who are angry. Mohammad Sajjad, a history teacher at Aligarh Muslim University, describes the interview as a "catwalk". His blog post reads, "Majority of people were neither allowed to distribute their CVs, nor were they allowed to show their publications. "Haan baantna hai to baant dijiye; apni kitabein kyon dikhaiyega phir sametney mein diqqat hogi (distribute it if you want to, why would you show your books? It will be difficult to collect them back)" was their utterance." He was also asked if he knew Persian even though his area of expertise is late-colonial and post-Independence India. "This was not a board of experts. They didn't know anything about any discipline and weren't interested. My interview lasted all of four minutes," says another applicant.
Another history candidate says, "All questions were from the Pro-VC who isn't from my discipline. My colleagues said 'You've spoken against FYUP, what did you expect ?'"Seven teachers from the history department wrote to the VC about their colleague, Anshu Malhotra, being denied promotion. Currently an associate professor, she'd applied for the post of professor under the Career Advancement Scheme.
"Unless the academic criteria for promotion...has changed, there seems to be no reason for denying promotion," says the letter. "There is, however, some cause for apprehension that the reason for denial may be the unease that the DU administration seems to have reagarding the department of history, based on the fact that members of this department had publicly voiced their reasoned critique of the FYUP. That a teacher of the calibre of Dr Anshu Malhotra should have been treated in this manner is shocking, and casts doubt on the integrity of the selection process."
Attempts were made to contact the VC— he neither received calls nor replied to text messages.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/FYUP-bias-in-teacher-hiring/articleshow/30877971.cms
