Illusion of Autonomy: Re-examining the Totalising State of Universities

The recent decision by the Dhaka University Syndicate to systematically investigate 231 faculty members accused of alignment with the deposed Awami League (AL) regime exposes a deeply entrenched, recurring crisis in Bangladesh’s higher education system. Driven by a memorandum from the “Anti-Fascist Teachers of Dhaka University”, this administrative purge is not isolated. Mirroring actions at Rajshahi University (RU), Jahangirnagar University (JU) and some other public universities, the state is witnessing mass suspensions, forced leaves and targeted enlistments of pro-AL and left-leaning academics. By reducing campus governance to ideological compliance, the post-uprising landscape reproduces the exact structural vices it claimed to dismantle. Replacing a partisan political hegemony with another proves that without fundamental legal transformation, Bangladesh’s higher education institutions will remain trapped in an inescapable cycle of retribution.

To break this destructive cycle or loop, a clear boundary must be drawn between ideological persecution and legitimate judicial accountability. Academics who were directly involved in criminal activities – or those who issued verbal/written orders that led to the confinement, harassment and torture of university students during the July Mass Uprising – must be absolutely brought to justice. However, this reckoning cannot take the form of vigilante justice, administrative overreach or sweeping ideological lists. The entire process must be transparent, legally sound and strictly executed according to the university ordinances and the statutory law of the state. Holding individual wrongdoers accountable through transparent legal framework is a judicial necessity. Of course, enacting a mass ideological purge is an institutional failure.

To understand the present crisis, we must look at how universities function as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) – a term coined by French theorist Louis Althusser. Public universities are rarely neutral sites of education; they are critical instruments used by the ruling class to secure ideological conformity and reproduce state power. Rather than serving as an independent arena for free thought, the campus ecosystem is routinely captured by whichever political regime controls the state machinery. Under the previous authoritarian administration of Sheikh Hasina, universities operated directly under this “dangerous” framework posing a potential threat to intellectual freedom. 

The targeting of university academics, writers and intellectuals under the Digital Security Act 2018 during the previous authoritarian regime has been a textbook example of how dissenting voices were silenced in academia. Dissenting academics had to face relentless institutional harassment, arbitrary transfers and online character assassinations if they dared to challenge state narratives or public policies. Dissidents were monitored, sidelined and systematically intimidated by both partisan administrators and state-backed student wings. Even today, the new administrations in many universities seem to be using the very same political apparatus. While the ideological banner has shifted from secular nationalism to anti-fascism, the underlying structural logic remains identical: the university is deployed to enforce uncritical political allegiance, rendering intellectual servitude the prerequisite for professional survival.

In Bangladeshi academia, truth has long been weaponised by partisan administrations. Under the previous regime, academic appointments, research grants and promotions were contingent on propagating state-sanctioned narratives. In the post-uprising landscape, the definition of legitimate knowledge has shifted, but the exclusionary enforcement mechanism remains unchanged. When administrative panels use political purity tests to validate or invalidate academics, they destroy the fundamental premise of peer-reviewed merit. Scholarly authority no longer stems from empirical rigor or pedagogical competence; it is entirely determined by an individual’s proximity to prevailing political power. 

For decades, dominant faculty alliances – such as the AL-leaning Blue Panel (dubbed as Nil Dal) – functioned as self-serving cartels. They captured administrative offices, monopolised promotions and controlled university resources to reward regime loyalty. Banning these platforms or purging their members en masse does not dismantle the underlying machinery of capture; it simply transfers the monopoly of institutional control to a new group of political opportunists.

The ultimate casualty of this perpetual warfare is the complete silencing of the academics’ dissenting voices. Across every political regime in Bangladesh’s history, independent scholars who refuse to align with ruling factions have been systematically marginalised. When university teachers are nakedly exposed to hyper-partisan politics, the entire higher education ecosystem is fundamentally jeopardised. Intellectual freedom cannot exist in an environment of collective retribution, where academics must constantly self-censor in anticipation of the next inevitable regime change. In fact, an academic or researcher should not be a mental slave to any partisan ideology. 

Other nations transitioning from authoritarian control have also demonstrated that structural insulation is entirely achievable. Post-apartheid South Africa successfully handled its university statutes through the Higher Education Act 101 of 1997. By dismantling the racial and ideological apparatus used by the apartheid state to police thoughts, South Africa replaced regime-dictated appointments with independent governance structures and transparent quality assurance frameworks. This historical shift legally decoupled faculty career advancement from state-sanctioned ideology, preserving the university campus as a place for critical social critique.

Seemingly, the root of Bangladesh’s institutional or academic vulnerability lies in the outdated Public University Acts of 1973 under which only four public universities – Dhaka, Rajshahi, Chittagong and Jahangirnagar – function. While originally intended to grant democratic autonomy to faculty members, the 1973 Act inadvertently legalised the partisan polarisation of campus elections (for the position of Dean under different faculties and for teachers’ association), turning university administrations into extensions of state power. To resolve this problem permanently, the 1973 Acts must be amended urgently to completely sever public universities from state patronage. Faculty members must maintain their right to express critical opinions on polity, politics and public policies, but they must be statutory prohibited from exposing themselves to partisan political affiliations on campuses. 

Uncritical political allegiance is tantamount to intellectual servitude – a reality that has ruined academic freedom and intellectual independence over the decades. Faction-based academic elections must be replaced with neutral and independent search committees tasked with appointing university leadership purely on academic merit, administrative skills and scholarly activities. Only by replacing partisan retribution with a structural rule of law, Bangladesh can truly safeguard academic freedom, uphold institutional autonomy, preserve intellectual dissent and transform its universities into genuine centres of scholarship, intellectual inquiry and academic excellence. 
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The writer is an Associate Professor of the department of English at Stamford University Bangladesh. He can be contacted at [email protected]