Dear colleague,

For me personally, it has been Prof. Truschke's repeated mention of a particular colleague's name that seemed unnecessary and, in this context, unethical. I suppose the kinds of courses at law and medical schools that you refer to normally dispense with mentioning the names of specific colleagues who have been accused and/or found guilty of sexual harassment. And, to latch on to a point that Prof. Slaje has tried to make, I suppose most of the schools you have in mind are situated in North America, while their pedagogical practices naturally reflect preoccupations of the land.

In the European academic scene (or what small part of it I can claim to be familiar with), I am happy to have experienced myself, when I was falsely accused by a band of students of having made racist and homophobic statements in class, that Universities are neither quick to dismiss the grievances of the accusers, nor the defense of the accused, and respect for due process seems to be valued more than what I gather to be the case in the North American segment of global academia — or at least among those who speak for it on this forum.

INDOLOGY is an international forum, and this is not the first time that we have witnessed on the part of some North American colleagues the presumption that local preoccupations are global ones. The response that this provokes now from European scholars, in other cases from colleagues in India, seems to me a very salutary contribution to preserving diversity of perspectives in our field.

Yours,

Arlo Griffiths

École française d'Extrême-Orient