Progressive Pakistan Alliance Denounces Restrictions on Academic Freedom
Progressive Pakistan Alliance (PPA), a nonprofit organization based in Washington DC, has strongly denounced recent restrictions on academic freedom at several universities in Pakistan.
These attempts, a PPA press release said, “are a direct extension of muting voices of conscience in the country that promote freedom of expression, human rights, peace, and sociocultural harmony.” “Writers, professors and journalists have been forcefully kidnapped, tortured or killed indicating that Pakistan is fast becoming a garrison state where free thinking and freedom of expression have become a punishable crime.”
Raising its voice against imposing limits on critical thinking and freedom of expression in higher education, PPA has registered its strong protest on pressuring the universities to cancel events on social movements and critical national issues on campuses, sacking university professors, and attempts to change the university curriculum.
The PPA statement is against the backdrop of recent incidents where under external pressure events have been cancelled at Habib University in Karachi and Lahore University of Management Sciences on social movements and increasing violence on campuses.
Additionally, a professor was dismissed at Punjab University in Lahore without giving reasons, and the administration of Gomel University in DI Khan has been asked to change its curriculum contents on critical thinking.
PPA has also expressed its unconditional support to the open letter signed by 130 professors and scholars from Pakistan, the United States, England, Canada, and other countries including prominent scholar Noam Chomsky.
The letter being circulated on the social media, criticizing these undemocratic constraints on academic freedom, reiterated that the “function of the university is to foster an atmosphere in which ideas are respectfully shared and rigorous research and analysis is encouraged.”
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