A question for the conscience of university faculty
The staff room door opens and the conversation stops. Cups halt halfway to lips. Someone becomes absorbed in a phone; someone else develops a sudden interest in the weather. The man in the doorway reads the silence the way you read your own name on a nameplate. Yesterday he was “Professor Sahib.” Today he is “a case.” And I confess that most of us have finished plenty of cups of tea in exactly that silence.
His offence? A question. Was the selection board convened according to the rules? Why were the terms of that appointment not applied equally to every candidate? In some institutions there is only one unforgivable question: the one whose honest answer everybody already knows.
Then, almost on cue, a complaint surfaces, in the very same fortnight. Whether it is true is for an inquiry to decide, and rightly so. But one thing never waits for the inquiry: the word. Harassment works as a sentence in our society, and it outruns any official notice. It travels down corridors, across tea tables and through WhatsApp groups, and finally reaches the man’s home before he does.
Sometimes it does not travel by itself; it is carried. A few news items, a few posts, some “sources” whose names never appear but whose resources are always visible. When an institution’s own fingerprints are on such a campaign, the contest is one man against a machine, and machines do not tire.
Let me be plain. A genuine harassment complaint is a shield in the hands of the vulnerable, and its impartial investigation is a sacred duty. But turn that shield into a sword against an inconvenient colleague and the damage does not end with him. It falls on everyone who will one day truly need the shield. Not every administration behaves this way, and not every complaint is false. Some heads of institutions hold to principle through all the noise. But a campaign that is not looking for the truth is an insult to it.
And this corridor has more than one door. On the same floor, another professor’s office has acquired a different word: plagiarism. It is the gravest charge in academic life, which is precisely why it has become the cheapest weapon. Investigate, by all means, and investigate rigorously. But when the rumour outruns the inquiry, the damage is done whether the charge sticks or not. His name comes under suspicion long before his papers do.
Somewhere in the same building sits the empty chair of a senior dean whose offence was saying “no” in a meeting. First the deanship went, then the chairmanship. No charge, no inquiry, only a notification that arrived so promptly it looked as if it had been typed years ago and left in a drawer. Posts are a public trust, not a private estate, and withdrawing them is within an administration’s powers. But when the real reason is dissent and the paperwork says “administrative requirement,” the label changes and the punishment does not.
Three doors, three tools: the harassment word, the plagiarism word, the removal notice. One purpose: to show everyone else what disagreement costs.
Then comes the inquiry. Too often its members are people whose next promotion, next post and next term depend on the approval of the very office that welcomed the complaint. Expecting justice from such a panel is like expecting your own shadow to disagree with you. Long before the verdict is written, everyone knows which way the pen will move.
Meanwhile the season of “administrative measures” arrives. Privileges go “under review.” His office is reassigned to other use. For some reason the key no longer turns in the lock. There is no space for a desk, and the rule for a chair is still being drafted. The man who kept classrooms alive for years now moves through his own department like a guest in someone else’s house, the kind of hospitality in which no one offers you a seat. A student glances at the door before asking him a question. The cup that was always set aside for him is now the last to be washed. And at home, his child hesitates for a moment when asked in class what their father does.
Nor is this only a local story. In England, Cambridge professor Jason Arday faced allegations of plagiarism, along with questions about his qualifications and the claims he had made about himself. The case is different in many ways: another country, another institution, no harassment allegation. He denied plagiarism while acknowledging errors in his work. He resigned in August, saying the relentless public attack had taken a profound toll on him and those he loved, and days later he was found dead at 41. His family says he had endured sustained abuse for more than three years.
Police have said the death is not being treated as suspicious, and the university’s own investigation was still open. No column can settle why a person dies, and this one will not try. But the gap is a familiar one: the accusation was loud, and the verdict never got its turn. A verdict that arrives too late, even a kind one, reaches an address where no one is left to read it.
What happens to a person inside that gap is never written in any file. Sleep leaves. Appetite goes. Every ringing phone sounds like another notice. Relentless public shaming and isolation can wear a person down until life itself feels like a weight. That exhaustion is not weakness; it is the natural result of sustained pressure. And the first remedy is not a prescription but a person who comes and sits beside you. Whoever is worn down this far should not be ashamed to ask for help, and those around them should not be afraid to listen.
Which brings me back to the tea. We do not know whether the complaint was true or the allegation sound. We do know that one man’s desk was gone before any verdict. We know that another man’s name had crossed the entire corridor before any inquiry concluded. We know that a third man’s “no” and his removal came out of the same week. We know where every whisper in the group chat begins. We know, and we drink our tea.
Our silence is not without reasons. We have renewals due, promotion files pending, school fees to pay. But the arithmetic leaves something out: a file does not choose its victim; it picks up whoever is within reach. In a system that punishes questions, none of us is safe. We simply haven’t asked ours yet. Our silence does not protect us. It only postpones our turn.
That is why an administration’s real strength is not its powers but our distance from one another. It is not afraid of one professor; it is afraid of a hundred, which is why it has perfected the art of seating them apart. And where a hundred people sit alone, breaking one is not hard.
Yet the rules already exist. Under the harassment law, the inquiry committee must give its recommendations within thirty days of starting. HEC’s plagiarism policy binds committee members to confidentiality and gives the accused a chance to establish the originality of their work. What is missing is not rules but hands willing to stand behind them. Collective conscience does not need a sit-in. It asks for three small things.
One: Let the faculty jointly demand in writing that every inquiry follow these rules: confidential, time-bound, and staffed by members whose careers do not hang on either party’s approval.
Two: Until a verdict arrives, let no one’s desk, chair, office or basic facilities be taken away, and let any removal from post over disagreement come with written reasons. Punishment follows a decision. It does not precede one.
Three, the hardest and the cheapest: go and sit beside the one who has been seated alone. Everyone else needs rules. He needs a human being.
One day the staff room door will open again. The conversation will stop again; the cups will hover again. That is the moment our test was set for. Someone will get up, pull out the chair beside them, and say, “Professor Sahib, come, sit here.”
A cup will be set in front of him. The door will close. And for the first time in a long while, there will be laughter in the room.