You can't train law students to argue by curbing their free speech: Prof Faizan Mustafa

Chanakya National Law University (CNLU) Vice-Chancellor (VC) Prof Faizan Mustafa said on Monday that law students can't be trained in the art of argument when their freedom of speech is curbed.

He added that law students and law schools, in his assessment, allow their students considerably greater freedom of expression than Vice-Chancellors of traditional universities typically permit.

"I am absolutely clear that since law students are going to defend liberties of others, they are to be trained in this art of making an argument and you cannot train them in the art of argument by curbing their freedom of speech in terms of speaking, in terms of making cartoons, or in terms of every other expression," he said.

Prof Mustafa was speaking at a webinar titled Freedom of speech in law schools, hosted by The Hindu. He was responding to a question on recent convocation row at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) University of Law and its subsequent fallout. He was also asked how he would have reacted had his own students opposed the Chief Justice of India (CJI) as chief guest at their convocation.

He began by clarifying that he did not wish to comment specifically on an institution he led for a decade, but said that he generally responds to students within minutes whenever they write to him. He recalled his time as a student at Aligarh Muslim University, where union election speeches openly discussed university governance without restriction or disciplinary action.

"I don't recall any action being taken or any restrictions being put on the exercise of free speech," he said.

Recalling his stint as VC of NALSAR, he said that he followed the "liberty model of administration". He said that knowledge creation - the purpose of a university - cannot happen in a controlled environment.

"Because for knowledge creation you require raising of questions and raising of uncomfortable questions, challenging the existing knowledge...If we really want to improve the ranking of our universities, global rankings, then we have to give that freedom to the faculty to do research in the areas they want to do research, to write whatever they want to write, to speak whatever they want to speak and to allow students to question everything," he added.

He also recalled that as a constitutional law teacher, he found it fascinating that after teaching students the importance of liberty, they would later invoke his own lectures against him as an administrator, telling him, "You only taught this. Now give us this liberty."

He also narrated an incident from his days at NALSAR, when students proposed a debate on whether a pub should be opened on campus as it would be safer for students to drink there than to risk accidents while returning from outside. Despite advice from some teachers to disallow the topic, Mustafa said that he not only permitted the debate but attended it himself, sitting on the road outside the boys' hostel along with the students. The motion was eventually put to vote and rejected by the students themselves.

Prof Mustafa also argued that law school Vice-Chancellors have too much control over institutional decision-making.

"As far as my personal ideology as VC is concerned, as someone who is today the senior-most VC of the public universities in India, having been there and survived for 16 long years, I can say that the whole model of university governance in India is wrong.

The universities are VC-centric...he is the one who calls shots. So, in my opinion, this governance model itself is wrong," he said.