The hand-wringing from the global educational establishment is right on cue. Following Dhaka University’s suspension of high-profile professors including Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah, A K M Jamal Uddin, and Shibli Rubayat-Ul-Islam, the Bangladesh Public University Progressive Teachers’ Society released a predictably panicked statement. They decried the move as an "assault on free thought" and warned of a "culture of fear."
It is a beautiful narrative. It is also entirely wrong.
By framing this as a standard battle over academic freedom, critics are choosing a lazy consensus over uncomfortable reality. They are ignoring what actually happened on the ground during the July Uprising. This is not an academic debate gone wrong; it is an overdue institutional clearing of individuals who actively weaponized their state-backed authority against their own students. When tenure becomes a shield for physical and digital intimidation, stripping it away isn't an attack on higher education. It is the only way to save it.
The Myth of the Ideological Purge
The primary argument from the competitor press and traditionalist educator groups rests on a foundational flaw: the belief that these suspensions stem from mere "political differences and ideological intolerance."
Let us look at the actual indictments. These faculty members are not being sidelined for writing contrarian research papers or harboring unpopular philosophies. They face formal, student-led evidence of threatening individuals during a mass uprising, calling protesting students "Razakars"—a historically charged, volatile slur in Bangladesh—and utilizing state machinery to jeopardize student safety.
I have watched administrative boards across global institutions blow millions on public relations crises by trying to treat active hostility as a protected viewpoint. There is a precise difference between an intellectual stance and administrative thuggery. Academic freedom protects your right to challenge the state; it does not protect your right to act as the state’s enforcement arm inside a lecture hall.
Deconstructing the "Culture of Fear" Fallacy
To understand why the current backlash is deeply flawed, we have to look closely at the mechanics of university power structures. Critics argue that immediate suspension without the full, multi-year bureaucratic processing outlined in the University Order of 1973 destroys institutional tradition.
Consider how institutional power actually flows in a crisis:
- The Traditional View: A university must protect the professor at all costs to ensure minority opinions survive.
- The Functional Reality: When a professor threatens a student's safety or labels them an enemy of the state, the power asymmetry tilts entirely. The student cannot learn, cannot speak, and cannot safely exist on campus.
The real culture of fear is not created when powerful, well-connected administrators get suspended with a subsistence allowance while an investigation occurs. The culture of fear is created when students realize that the person grading their exams is actively reporting their political whereabouts to partisan student wings.
By demanding that Dhaka University wait for a slow, easily manipulated bureaucratic process while these individuals retain their active standing, critics are asking students to submit to the very intimidation they risked their lives to overthrow.
The Hypocrisy of Free Speech Fundamentalism
The progressive groups defending the suspended faculty appeal to the "freedom of thought and conscience" guaranteed by the Constitution. But let us be brutally honest about the legacy of political appointments in public universities. Under the previous regime, senior academic postings and regulatory roles—such as those held by Shibli Rubayat-Ul-Islam at the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission—were not handed out for pure academic merit. They were deeply intertwined with state fealty.
True intellectual coexistence requires a basic level of safety. You cannot have a free marketplace of ideas when one participant holds a megaphone and a direct line to state security forces, while the other faces expulsion or worse.
There is an obvious downside to the current administration’s swift action: it risks setting a precedent for retaliatory cycles whenever a government shifts. That is a valid institutional risk. But pretending that the status quo prior to August 2024 was a pristine sanctuary of "free intellect and logic" is a hallucination. The environment was already corrupted; the suspensions are a symptom of a systemic fever breaking, not the start of the disease.
Stop Trying to Fix the Bureaucracy
The conventional advice from international observers is always the same: reform the disciplinary committees, strengthen the tenure guidelines, and trust the long-standing democratic traditions.
That advice fails because it assumes the existing machinery operates in good faith. When an institution has spent over a decade undergoing hyper-partisan polarization, the internal rules are often calibrated to protect the regime's allies and punish dissenters.
Dhaka University is currently acting as a political entity because it was forced to become one long ago. Reversing that reality requires sharp, disruptive interventions, not polite procedural compliance. The temporary suspensions of these professors, alongside partisan administrative figures like Deputy Registrar Lovlu Molla, are necessary systemic circuit breakers.
The baseline of university life must be reset to a simple, unyielding rule: your academic credentials do not exempt you from accountability if you threaten the physical safety of the student body. If the global academic community cannot accept that distinction, then their definition of higher education is no longer worth protecting.
