An anti-Hindu clique has made a mockery of academic freedom using an unwieldy administrative mechanism to cancel Subramanian Swamy's courses. The result has been a fierce backlash.

Background: Insular Indologists and generous donors

Georges Clemenceau (1841 - 1929), prime minister of France during World War I once said: "War is too important a matter to be left to the generals." This wisdom can now be applied to those calling themselves by names like Indologist, India Studies Expert, South Asia Expert (the latest fashion) and so forth.  Thanks to their ham-handed expulsion of the economist and visiting professor Dr Subramanian Swamy, Harvard now has a major public relations problem on its hands.

To understand the nature of Harvard's public relations problem, it helps to recognize that Harvard has a dual personality: it is a university that is also a business. Harvard University is part of the Harvard Corporation which answers to its board. (Actually it has two boards, of fellows and of overseers-don't ask me why.) It is the richest university in the world with assets (called endowment) valued at $32 billion (over one lakh sixty thousand crore rupees in today's values). Its assets are managed by the Harvard Management Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard.

In 2007, its assets stood at $36 billion. During the global economic downturn Harvard endowment lost 22 percent of its value or eight billion dollars. It has recovered somewhat in the past two years and is now valued at $32 billion, better but still well short of what it was five years ago. To grow, Harvard needs money from two sources- income from its assets and contributions from its ‘customers'. The latter may now take a hit thanks to the controversy and the backlash following the cancellation of Subramanian Swamy's courses.

Like any successful business Harvard treats customer loyalty as its most valuable asset; it takes extraordinary care to cultivate and nurture good relations. Its customers are its alumni. They donate generously and also send their children to Harvard. Increasingly, Harvard is drawing its students-and donations-from the wealthy Indian-American community and in recent years from businesses and professionals in India. In the past year alone, individuals from major Indian business houses like Infosys and Mahindras (to name just a couple) have given tens of millions of dollars to Harvard.

Hubris results in backlash

The last thing that Harvard needs at this juncture, as it is just recovering from the fallout of the financial crisis is a public relations disaster of this nature. A question that needs to be answered is- how could Harvard, whose public relations skills are second to none, allow itself to be blindsided by an avalanche of this magnitude? The only answer I can think of is hubris-it took the goodwill and loyalty of an important segment its ‘customers'- the Indian alumni and students-for granted and failed to respond adequately to their complaints over the shrill anti-Hindu and anti-Indian rhetoric and propaganda of some of its faculty. The worst offenders were Indologist Michael Witzel and a few of his associates.

The dismissal of Subramanian Swamy was the last straw. He is regarded as a hero by a large number of Indians because of his uncompromising stand against terrorism and his crusade against corruption. Judged by Witzel's record over the past several years, going back to his unseemly involvement in the California school curriculum controversy- and the anti-Hindu rants of his hate group IER (Indo-Eurasian Research), it was a disaster waiting to happen. I had brought his unsavory activities to the attention of Harvard administration more than once, but they had always advised me that however disagreeable it may be, Witzel's (and other's) views were protected by academic freedom. (This was before Dr Faust took over as president.)

All this was public knowledge, and I was not the only one to object. Now for Harvard to dismiss Subramanian Swamy at the instigation of people like Witzel and his departmental colleague Diana Eck looks like hypocrisy of the first order. It is not only Indians that are outraged by this decision: academics and free thinkers who have nothing to with India or Hinduism have expressed their outrage. This is made worse by the fact that other institutions like Yale have also buckled under Islamist pressure. Last summer (2011), Yale expelled Dr Charles Small (of the Yale Initiative for the Inter-disciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism), because he held a conference in which Islamic anti-Semitism and Islamic terrorism were discussed. The following excerpt from a blog by a non-Indian (Pamela Geller) gives an idea.