Nalanda University News Updates, Nalanda University Blog

The government is getting ready to appoint a new chancellor of Nalanda University and may even move to reconstitute its governing board after Nobel laureate Amartya Sen left in a huff a few weeks ago.

Sources said MEA and the President's office received the report (minutes) of the January 13 meeting of the university's governing board only last week. The meeting had put forward a choice of either an extension to Professor Sen as chancellor, or to constitute a new panel. The government may have given Sen an extension, but he called it quits alleging government interference in academia. MEA had said that Sen was "jumping the gun".

The Nalanda Mentor Group said they had sent the relevant portions of the 'minutes' to MEA and the President, but both decided to wait for the full report and not take a decision based on excerpts.

Sources said a new chancellor will be appointed by July when Sen's term ends. The government may also reconstitute the governing board…

A site selection panel for IIM Bihar has put its weight behind Gaya with certain riders even as the human resource development (HRD) ministry was hesitant on the choice of location of the premier B-school.

The committee headed by Amarjeet Sinha, additional secretary in the ministry, visited possible sites in Patna and Gaya two months ago. In its report, the committee is learnt to have favoured Gaya with the condition that the state government has to commit that the land being offered there does not involve any dispute and that it would provide a temporary campus in the city, sources told The Telegraph.

The Bihar government has been pushing for Gaya as the site for the IIM. It has identified land on the campus of Magadh University for the proposed institute, which would start functioning from the coming academic session with five other new IIMs in the states of Odisha, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.

The Educational Consultants India Ltd (EdCIL) has detailed …

Economist-philosopher Amartya Sen, who has written to the government to say he would not like to be Chancellor of Nalanda University after July, spoke to Seema Chishti on some of the questions that have been raised about his relationship with the university. Excerpts.

It is sometimes said that since the government is paying for most of the expenses of Nalanda University, it should be free to take the major decisions about the running of the university. Shouldn’t it?
There is a distinction between being, firstly, an autonomous institution financed by the government and, secondly, an institution under governmental command. The universities in Europe, going back many hundreds of years, have become academically excellent through governmental respect for the autonomy of the universities. The British guard academic independence in their own country with great care, even though the British rulers of colonial India very often violated the autonomy of public academic institutions. We should a…

Fellow Members of the Nalanda Governing Board

Dear Colleagues,

19 February 2015

I am writing to you on a subject relating to the governance of Nalanda University in which all of us have been very deeply involved. As you know, at its last meeting on January 13-14, 2015, the Board decided unanimously (in my absence - I had recused myself – leaving George Yeo to chair the Board meeting) that I should be asked to serve as Chancellor of Nalanda University for a second term, when my present term expires in late July. The unanimity was, I was pleased to be told, firm and enthusiastic, coming from all members of the Board , which – as you know – consists of representatives from different Asian countries (including China, Japan, Singapore and others), in addition of course to Indian academics and professionals.

However, the decision of the Governing Board becomes operational, according to the Nalanda University Act of Parliament, only after the Visitor of the University (the President of Indi…