THE TELEGRAPH
- Opinion: Forced to Choose: Trump’s compact is in clever accordance with American capitalism. It makes its appearance as a choice offered to universities that becomes for them a favourable financial transaction |The Telegraph, November 13, 2025|
- Opinion: Predatory State-Illiberal Hungary’s evisceration of institutions will resonate with Indians who have paid attention to the political onslaught on universities by parties of different stripes around them. | The Telegraph, May 15, 2025|
- Problematic unity: The current ruling party’s fetish for ‘shuddha’, Sanskrit-inflected Hindi, derived from a high-Brahminical past, is a fabricated fantasy, as fundamentalist utopias inevitably are…|The Telegraph, April 16, 2025|
- Death of a dream: For the educated youth from the lower-middle & working class of this subcontinent, the price of a profession feels exorbitant today, August 27, 2024
- Coached for disaster: Falling back on the scramble for government jobs is also falling back on the Kota factories that do not distinguish among UPSC, CAT, and JEE., May 30, 2024
- Ideology’s Assault: Economics and technology might have pushed traditional humanities to a corner — not just in the university but in the larger public sphere of cultural consumption, January 3, 2024
- A broken pact: Three major universities that grew outside the British colonial model of affiliating collegiate systems — JNU, Hyderabad Central University, and JU — were quickest to catch the ‘anti-national’ logo, November 28, 2023
- Hemmed In: The versatile challenges confronting universities, September 30, 2023
- Lifelong lessons: Five American states — Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Alaska and Utah — have now dropped the requirement of a four-year college degree for most government jobs, May 24, 2023
- Bleak prospects: Bringing foreign universities to India is challenging, March 28, 2023
- Notable Decline: India is degrading its public universities, January 26, 2023
- Image over text: The performance of learning, December 1, 2022
- India’s Peter Pans: The private lives of teachers, September 22, 2022
- Death of a teacher: With the passing of each mentor, a part of the old student crumbles, November 1, 2021
- College, Truncated, April 5, 2021
- New divisions: The cruel virtual interior, December 28, 2020
- New divisions: The cruel virtual interior, December 20, 2020
- The illiberal arts” September 29, 2016
Outlook
Find all the latest articles by the author, here.
- Interview: The Great American Campus Dilemma: Satish Padmanabhan of Outlook raised a few questions in an email exchange with Saikat Majumdar, Ashoka University professor and former faculty at Stanford |Outlook, July 11, 2025|
- What is Business IQ? Business IQ Not Singular But A Complex Set Of Intelligences November 01, 2023
- Political Seepage In Higher Education And Its Impact On Liberal Society September 03, 2023
- When Science Meets Arts June 29, 2023
- Interpersonal Intelligence Is Key To Human Resource Management And Every Aspect Of Corporate Life October 14, 2022
- The Future of Universities: Can India Overcome The Digital Divide? January 15, 2022
- What Is The Future Of The Liberal Arts In Asia? January 1, 2022
- Read between the university rankings
September 27, 2021
- Learning Among Fear and Suspicion
August 18, 2021
- Will Migrant Students Continue to Face Covid Racism?
July 28, 2021
- Teachers Who Did Not Get Enough Time to Teach, Just Enough To Die
June 23, 2021 A Plea For Humane, Pandemic-Sensitive Schools
The Child-Soldiers of Protest
May 17, 2021
March 6, 2021- How 2020 Took Away Childhood From The Nation’s Poorest And Most Vulnerable Children
December 30, 2020 - A Reduced CBSE Syllabus: Boon Or Bane For Students?
December 4, 2020 - What Would The Presidential Election Results Mean For US Higher Education?
October 29, 2020 - Do We Need A New Value-System For Professional Survival In A Post-Pandemic World?
October 14, 2020 - What is the future of the American Ph.D?
September 30, 2020 - The inequitable labours of the Pandemic
September 9, 2020 - The Falling Fall: Terrifying Choices Facing A College Semester Amid Covid-19 Pandemic
August 10, 2020 - The Entirety Of Success Of National Education Policy Depends On Research Excellence By Faculty
August 6, 2020 - When Campus Is Safer Than Home: Is It Time Universities Bring Back Vulnerable Students?
July 28, 2020 - Revocation Of Immigration Rules May Not End Victimisation Of Foreign Students In US
July 17, 2020 - Who Is Responsible If People Die From Coronavirus On A Reopened Campus?
June 20, 2020 - Indian Universities In Post-Covid Crisis Landscape: The Way Forward
June 4, 2020 - How COVID-19 Has Affected US University Campuses, And What The Fall Semester Looks Like
May 26, 2020 - Not US, UK Or Europe, Why Student Traffic Will Now Shift To Locations In East Asia
May 25, 2020 - A Primer For The Pandemic: How Can Students Survive And Thrive During COVID-19 Crisis
April 20, 2020 - Still, Faded Chalk On Blackboards
April 13, 2020 - Coronavirus Pandemic: Is Future of International Study and Academic Careers Under Threat?
April 1, 2020 - Will Students Survive The Corona-shaped Hole In Their Careers?
March 27, 2020 - The Viral Learning Curve- Universities and Classes in the Time of Corona
March 21, 2020 - The Holistic New Age College Admission
March 10, 2020 - Opinion: Vocationalisation, Digitization, Globalisation Laudable But Not At Cost Of Our Public Universities
February 24, 2020 - Caste Out of Campus: Apartheid Methods Of Public Classification Lead To Prejudice
February 13, 2020 - Needed: Fair And Practical Guidelines On Student Activism In Universities
January 29, 2020 - A New Brotherhood: Two Hues Of India’s Saffron
January 13, 2020 - JNU Attack Is Brutal Act Against Reason By Majoritarian Government
January 6, 2020 - A Cop, A Rose And A Blush Of Shame
December 24, 2019 - When Did Our Students Become Criminals?
December 18, 2019 - The American School Century
July 9, 2018
The Hindu
Find all the latest articles by the author, here.
- What is Common Sense?
December 21, 2019 - Liberal Arts or Artscience?
July 14, 2018 - Enhance the learning experience
May 21, 2018 - The T-shaped student
April 21, 2018 - “Engage with the world,” Interview conducted by Spatika Narayan,
March 18, 2018 - Education is more than just consumption of knowledge, Interview conducted by Anjum Hasan
January 13, 2018 - Reimagining intelligence in the Classroom
October 6, 2016
A Passionate Marriage of Disparate Disciplines
October 9, 2014
The Times Higher Education
Find all the latest articles by the author, as well as articles where he has been quoted, here.
Opinion: A university-hatched bomb plot raises explosive questions for Indian HE : Last month’s deadly car bombing at Delhi’s Red Fort, allegedly planned and perpetrated by academics and doctors, has left observers asking what such an outrage says about the nature, quality and future of the country’s universities | Times Higher Education, December 16, 2025|
Opinion: Can academic freedom survive in the new age of hard power: A world dominated by hard power might ultimately be one in which academic freedom ceases to be a factor in the prestige and reputation of universities |Times Higher Education, November 17, 2025|
Opinion: Will AI be the death of liberal arts in Asia?-Will liberal arts education emerge with a still-beating heart from the worldwide onslaught that has been unleashed on it – and on other cornerstones of traditional liberal democracy – by populist dictators? |Times Higher Education. July 14, 2025|
- This is probably the worst time in history to lose faith in universities– Saikat Majumdar writes about the clever stimulation of popular resentment against the perceived elitism of higher education leaving only the masses to the mercy of oligarchs who have aced the populism game.| Times Higher Education, April 17, 2025|
- Can India’s elite privates meet the demand for high-quality education? January 22, 2025
- Will the global culture wars save the humanities or destroy them?. February 29, 2024
- India’s lack of research universities hinders its academic freedom. October 2, 2023
- India’s branch campus plans may not germinate without seed funding | Times Higher Education (THE) January 20, 2023
- Indigenous models of liberal arts should beware of ethnic chauvinism | Times Higher Education (THE) July 29, 2022
- Is the honeymoon period over for liberal arts in Asia?
November 25, 2021 - Interview with Saikat Majumdar
September 2, 2021 - Is STEM growth really stunting the humanities?
August 19, 2021 - What are academics looking forward to about returning to campus?
April 29, 2021 - Caste discrimination is a global problem. January 7, 2021
- India’s Ranking Decline is a Timely Wake-up Call
September 14, 2019 - India Makes a Welcome Turn to the Liberal Arts
June 24, 2019 - The Crisis of Humanities is a Western Phenomenon
February 7, 2019 - A Brief History of the Modern Indian University
November 24, 2018 - The Battle for the Indian Mind
May 5, 2018
The Indian Express
Find all the latest articles by the author, here.
- In campus deaths, a warning: Residential education can be empowering, but its risks need hard reckoning February 24, 2025
- Higher education and training are beacons of hope for young Indians. But what safety do they guarantee?, August 23, 2024
- Current suspicion of higher education in US may outstay Trump
November 10, 2020 - Ironies and Barricades: How between JNU and BHU, we see the brutal distance that separates us as a nation
November 22, 2019 - The Liberal Professional
June 7, 2019
Scroll
Find all the latest articles by the author, here.
- Opinion: While Trump government is attacking universities, China is fostering higher education, March 30, 2025
- Opinion: Humanities education in a post-truth world: Commencement Lecture given at the Jindal School of Languages and Literature, OP Jindal Global University , August 17, 2024
- With Indian liberals under attack, the idea of the free-thinking university is under threat
January 12, 2019 - Why a liberal arts education should not (and does not) exclude the sciences
December 14, 2017 - The Liberal Art of DissentNovember 9, 2015
THE WIRE
Opinion: My Neighbour’s Language: Can We Overcome the NEP’s ‘Hindi Imposition’ Through Regional Solidarities?|The Wire, April 2, 2025|
Opinion: The Closing of the American Mind: When does science become ideology? And when does ideology become science? The answer, it seems, depends on who’s in power | The Wire, March 15, 2025|
OTHERS
- “When God is on Your Curriculum, He’s Present Everywhere and Visible Nowhere”, The Wire, March 13, 2021
- Three Guineas and a plea to endow a college, Ashoka Bulletin, March 10, 2021
- An interview with Daily Star, December 5, 2020
- “Let there be no partition: universities must not wall themselves off from public consciousness.” The Times of India, Op-Ed., March 3, 2016.
HINDUSTAN TIMES
- The Trinity in the American University
September 11, 2016 - Why Indian Techies Need Crash Courses in Liberal Arts
October 7, 2015 - Indian Universities Must Push Knowledge as an End in Itself
November 2, 2014