Scoop: The last attempt to hire permanent faculty in 2017, was scuppered by the high court
NLSIU Bengaluru has put out a call for 13 new faculty members at various levels, marking the first time NLS has put out an outside recruitment call since 2017 and also the first ad for permanent professors in law in more than 10 years.
We have reached out to NLS vice chancellor Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy for comment.
In 2017, we had reported that Krishnaswamy’s predecessor since 2009, Prof Venkat Rao, had put out an ad for five assistant professors after pressure from the Student Bar Association (SBA).
It had been the first such recruitment for permanent faculty at India’s oldest national law school since 2008.
However, it is understood that this recruitment was ultimately stalled and never completed or resulted in new joiners.
Correction: The recruitment was not stayed by the high court, as originally reported, but we understand it had been stopped by opposition of an internal council.
As such, if this call for new permanent faculty goes through, it would be the first time new professors join laterally at NLSIU in more than a decade.
Timelines are rapid: after the application deadline of 15 February, interviews of shortlisted candidates would be carried out between 18 and 20 February.
More details on requirements and application process available on NLS’ website.
According to the notification on its website, NLSIU would like applications for law teachers, by 15 February, in the following positions:
- 2 professors at the second-highest level 14 pay band under the 7th Pay Commission (coming to a salary of around Rs 1.442 lakh per month),
- 1 associate professor, at the level 13A pay band (with monthly remuneration of Rs 1.314 lakh),
- 8 assistant professors at the lowest level 10 pay band (at Rs 57,700 salary per month).
One position each amongst the 8 assistant professors in law are reserved for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates respectively.
It is also looking for two assistant professors in social sciences (see specialisations required below).
In 2008, NLSIU had hired (then) Dr Ashok R Patil as its consumer law chair and professor.
The reasons NLS had not hired any permanent professors may have included that salaries of non-permanent faculty are usually lower than the UGC payscales, which can result in higher staff turnover.
The Karnataka state government has planned to increase a student state quota at NLS to 25%, and may informally request that a total of 47.5% of students should come from Karnataka, including SC/ST reservations.
Comments
https://www.nls.ac.in/tc_attorney/dr-ashok-r-patil/#
1) Mrinal Satish, NLUD
2) Aparna Chandra, NLUD
3) Sidharth Chauhan, NALSAR
4) Sumit Baudh, JGLS
5) Anil Suraj, IIM Bangalore
6) Arun Sagar, JGLS
7) Naveen Thayyil, IIT Delhi
8) Namita Wahi, CPR
9) Ananth Padmanabhan, CPR
10 ) Mathew John, JGLS
This looks like its being rigged for his cronies/pals who will come from all his old institutions to waltz in, bypassing those who play by the rules.
The form asks for ugc stuff. It is clear that they intend to hire people who meet at least the minimum legal eligibility standards. Yes they might prefer people who have industry/ academic experience, or people whose research they think is valuable and interesting - but that doesn’t violate the law. And it honestly doesn’t violate principles of fairness until you can prove a bias.
I completely disagree with you on the need to prioritise practitioners over scholars. You might have encountered bad scholars - which was my experience in law school. But there is a lot even the best practitioners just can’t teach students - cause they wouldn’t know it themselves. it’s just a question of how you can best learn something. Experiential education is valuable to learn narrow fields, and to learn them well - you can get great at contract drafting through practice- and Practioners can teach you contract drafting better than most. But that does not hold true for learning say interpretation of statutes, jurisprudence, legal methods, history, sociology, most of constitutional law, some criminal justice, and even family law / labor law. This is because learning how the law works in those situations is a lot more than learning how practitioners practice the law. You should definitely have the practitioners perspective- hence clinical education - but I really don’t think they could do the subjects justice all on their own. I think law schools prepare you for entry level jobs which require a little training- I think that is entirely appropriate. I see no reason to reorient law school to make better clerks for law firms. Those who want to tread down that path already can - and they seem to see some success in it- which is good for them - law school should have higher aspirations.
Research associates at APU we’re llb grads yes- but they didn’t teach a single class as far as I know, and I have friends who were in those jobs- they were teaching assistants with research and administrative responsibilities and nothing more.
You can find similar TA programmes at nalsar for that matter- hardly an indicator of a history of flouting rules.
Regardless of whether those hired were “good”, there certainly wasn’t anything illegal in their appointment.
This position was not analogous to the assistant professor position to which you seem to be referring.
One of the people I knew also finished their llm and was then hired as an assistant professor 1 no unfair seniority at work there.
Different organisations have different nomenclature- a person called as “team leader” in one organisation might be called “project associate” in another and “project manager” in yet another. What you should look at - and what I am sure future hiring committees look at - is what the job responsibilities were. Discussing this any further would be fairly pointless- there seems to be a lack of good faith on your end- I am not sure why- but I certainly don’t think that the facts themselves have much to do with it.
5) therefore the idea that Sudhir has a past of flouting rules and is likely to do that again is based on very specious evidence. He bears little personal responsibility for MP Singh’s actions - I know most of us would have jumped at the chance if it had been offered to us. That does not make us unethical people. It does make the person flouting the rules - MPS more deserving of scrutiny.
6) there is nothing in the advertisement to show that excluding the mention of “minimum eligibility” criteria is meant to provide “flexibility” or a work around from ugc norms. Nothing - the absence of minimum eligibility criterion - when there are no such criterion mentioned - in an ad that is 3 sentences long- cannot be interpreted that way. They didn’t mention eligibility criterion- they also didn’t mention role responsibilities - why are we not assuming that is to provide for flexibility to enslave professors? Could it be possible that the ad is short just because they assume that the applicant pool will look at the application and figure they need NET for anything other than an assistant professor job? And because they are advertising for multiple positions and listing minimum eligibility for each position would’ve made a too long ad - especially for print media?
7) if Sudhir wanted to hire people non transparently- he would have done literally the same thing many other NLUs do- to hire assistant professors without advertising vacancies. I also teach at an NLU - I got hired in a week by talking to my professor. They didn’t even interview me. They have no idea what my core competency is- they did not check with a single reference. That is not the nls process. They are sticking to the rules - that indicates a move towards and not away from transparency. No hiring committee Is going to invite commenters on legally India’s website to sit in and observe - that isn’t a lack of transparency.
8) no one is saying don’t scrutinise Sudhirs actions - we are all better when we are accountable - but scrutiny has to be based on *something* if Sudhir hires people and it turns out he didn’t hire enough people from a certain caste/ religion/gender- or if he hires people and it turns out that other more meritorious candidates were overlooked - then we can talk about this seriously. This fear mongering is based on nothing.
And yet-8) you keep insisting there is something deeply wrong here everyone should be concerned about - which can only mean you have problems with believing this man has the right intentions - in fact rather than responding to evidence that shows bad action - you want to from the get go believe that these minutia are meant to facilitate bad acts. That’s motivated by something- I’m not sure it is a belief in transparency.
Don’t get me wrong- practitioners can add a lot- internships and clinical education are the best way to learn how to conduct the business of law, they are also the best way to learn what works with judges and with clients. But a broad and deep understanding of the law and how it plays out in society and politics? You need an academic who has devoted their career to studying exactly that to be able to do the subject justice.
I don’t think practitioners with minimal qualifications should be preferred over doctoral degree holders at all. The work that goes into a doctoral degree might be invisible to those outside the academe- but it is substantial- and it is the kind of work that professors need to do for every class they teach.
I completely disagree about legal academia in India. It is not as fancy as elite universities abroad. But to get a phd from a JNU or even an NLS/NALSAR- that takes a lot of work. It is not glamorous but it is work. And the phd students graduating from these institutions could easily do the job to the level that I’m speaking of. - that is your average Indian legal academic.
I agree that law schools have in the past hired atrociously bad professors -below average people with phds from what’s-it universities in who-cares towns who couldn’t tell their knee from their elbow- but the response to that cannot be to prioritise practitioners - a comparable group of whom would be just as bad. The response to that has to be to improve the applicant pool by creating more rigorous phd programmes. And being more selective about who gets hired.
Arguing that an average practitioner can do the job an average phd graduate can do - that’s just not true. There is a lot of work that goes into delivering courses that is invisible to students - think about pedagogy and course design and classroom structure and scheme of evaluation and learning objectives- taking this stuff seriously is what makes for good courses- and the average practitioner is not trained in any of that . The average academic - by the time they get their PhD- are trained in that.
Practitioners cannot fill this gap- they wouldn’t know how to. They don’t encounter the same things in their work. It is unfair to expect them to.
If the argument had been that we need to create more spaces where students can talk to/ work with practitioners than is currently available. I would agree with you.but if the argument is that you can dismiss someone who has earned a PhD - as a pen and paper degree - and prioritise practitioners over them- well that’s not going to lead to anything good.
And if by pen and paper degrees - you meant fraudulent degrees where people hadn’t done the work - Ofcourse they shouldn’t be hired in the first place. But if you mean to dismiss the work that academics do as “based only on books” - that’s grossly unfair. One could by return say that practitioners can only do jugaad. Neither of those statements are true characterisations of the work it takes to be a good practitioner/ academic.
1) NALSAR: 6 (1 from NLSIU: Sidharth Chauhan; 1 from NUJS: Sahana Ramesh; 1 from NLUJ: Chinmay Deshmukh; 1 from NLIU: Vivek Mukherjee; 1 from HNLU: Akansha Kumar; 1 from CNLU: Sudhanshu Kumar).
2) NLUJ: 6 (1 from NLUJ: Arunabha Banerjee; 1 from GNLU: Rohan Cherian Thomas; 1 from RMLNLU: Om Prakash Gautam; 2 from HNLU: Vini SIngh and Sarthak Mishra; 1 from NUJS (Aman Gupta)
3) NLUD: 5 (2 from;NLSIU: Mrinal Satish and Aparna Chandra; 3 from NALSAR: Anup Surendranath, Chinmayi Arun and Ankita Sangwan).
4) NLSIU : 4 (3 from NLSIU: Rahul Singh, Kunal Ambasta and Rashmi Venkatesan; 1 from NUALS: Manjeri Raj).
NOTE:
1) NUJS and NLIU excluded as both websites incomplete (both have really shit websites, I must say).
2) GNLU excluded as website not visited (shown as unsafe/infected by my anti-virus).
Haters: Admin is so anti-alumni! Bad place!
Faculty list shows plenty of alumni.
Haters: Admin only takes alumni! Such a shame! Must be politics. Bad place!
Moral of the story: Haters gonna hate. Who cares?
1) One of the best evidence of research output is publications. You can do a comparison and see who has published in reputed journals, or published books by leading publishers, or contributed chapters to books by well-known authors/publishers.
2) Another evidence of research is having a PhD from a top university (if not from abroad, then at least JNU/IIT/IIM/NLSIU etc).
3) Regarding teaching, it is difficult to measure but some good indicators some parameters are research experience (above) + prior practice/policy experience.
If you reject everything I said, then a least you will agree that submitting a copy-paste PhD thesis (established by Turn It In) or writing comedy articles in dubious journals you founded yourself are indications of low quality faculty.
This is the 2019 NIRF ranking on Research and Professional Practice for all these 4 NLUs:
In Combined Metric for Publications (PU), out of 50, NLSIU: 22.02; NALSAR: 34.66; NLUD: 13.90; NUJS: 22.96
In Combined metric for Quality of Publications (QP), out of 30, NLSIU: 5.47; NALSAR: 11.94; NLUD: 2.36; NUJS: 8.18
Of the 4 NLUs, NUJS actually ranks 2nd in both of these metrics.
So it's clear who is where, regardless of how many anecdotal 'evidence' you provide. Nobody is claiming every NUJS faculty is a good one. There are clowns everywhere, including the other 3 NLUs.
You know nothing about what makes a good teacher, by the way. Neither research experience nor 'policy experience', whatever that may mean, makes a good teacher. As for your other points, clearly NIRF differs from your conclusion and we all know between NIRF and an anon troll, whose word carries more weight. Regarding your PhD point, since when is an NLSIU PhD 'superior' in any way compared to other NLUs? Or, for that matter, PhD from IIMs or IITs when it comes to law? You are so ignorant about actual academics, you should go back to undergraduate programmes instead of finding fault with things that you are clueless about.
152: IIT Bombay
182: IIT Delhi
184: Indian Institute of Science
271: IIT Madras
281: IIT Kharagpur
291: IIT Kanpur
383: IIT Roorkee
474: DU
494: IIT Guwahati
So NLU alumni can get direct entry as permanent faculty if they do a PhD from a decent university abroad or from one of the above colleges (i.e. DU CLC or Management or Humanities department of IIT).
So this recruitment cycle might achieve that, if nothing else. Kunal and Rashmi will be regularised as well. That leaves about 4-5 actual slots for new applicants.
Kunal and Rashmi don't have PhDs. So they can't be recruited for any position above asst prof. Same for Sidharth Chauhan.
Sudhir might attract some interesting candidates at the asst prof level (and see some regularization and some movement also). But at the higher positions, it'll probably be faculty from tier 2 law schools seeking a promotion and a jump into the higher leagues.
[...] Mrinal has joined back at NLUD after the DJA but is on leave and Aparna has been on leave for a year now.
Though to be fair to them they have some 12-20 NLU alumni (most with an LLM fron UK/US) who work at the reseach centres and some of these centres are doing some amazing research.
Having said that, NLUD is really vulnerable to an exodus. Intra-faculty in fighting is at an all time high and is ugly. They have just increased their student intake and doubled their teaching load. That will leave faculty with less time for research. They are no longer a fully residential university, and that will change the character of the place and also hamper the ability to do cutting edge (and fast moving) policy work - which has been the hallmark of NLUD faculty and students. Most importantly, NLUD hasn't done open recruitment at senior levels since 2012-2013. Most of their well performing faculty are at Asst Prof levels but are already eligible to become professors and associate profs in open recruitment but not through the internal promotion route (which takes much longer). So many of them might be open to moving for career growth. The move for NLUD would be to immediately announce its own faculty recruitment in order to retain these people. But it can't do that since they have a lame duck VC. What do you want to bet that the timelines for the NLS recruitment process have been kept very short to ensure that the recruitment is over before a new VC takes charge at NLUD? Expect movement from the following: Anup, Aparna, Arul, Yogesh, Daniel. Chinmayi is already out of NLUD, but might want to join NLS too if she can get a regular appointment and not be on contract like she was at NLUD.
Please note that the quality of alumni matters also. As you can see above just 1 NLSIU alumni teaches at NALSAR and zero from NALSAR itself. At NUJS there is zero alumni of NLSIU or NALSAR and some of their alumni faculty do not have LLM/PhDs from abroad. Also, some names given above are named as "guest faculty" on the website. Even their degrees and publications are not given, LOL.
NLUD will retain #2 NIRF spot and one day become #1, so keep crying.
1) Number of NLU alumni teaching full-time and their names
2) Number teaching part-time and their names
3) List of elective courses taught by guest lectures in past 2 years: names and designations of the guest lecturers
4) Examples of 10 journal articles published by total faculty body in past 2 years
Let us see which NLU student bodies will have the guts to disclose the info.That will settle the debate once and for all on which NLU has best faculty.
https://www.news18.com/news/india/yediyurappa-govt-mulls-75-reservation-for-kannadigas-in-govt-and-private-jobs-in-karnataka-2490129.html
https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/jindal-global-law-school-recruits-104-new-faculty-members/1726745
https://www.hindustantimes.com/education/104-new-faculty-members-join-jindal-global-law-school/story-MrdezvcRGRazRQ7GkM5D6N.html
We can't demand that NLUs pay as much as JGLS but we can ask why some NLUs are not hiring alumni in adequate numbers.
[img]https://i.ibb.co/RyDrRbq/84491011-10163124466670717-7104782059784110080-o.jpg[/img]
And second/ there are all sorts of resins for Sudhir and his office to not leak any information about this. Even to students at nls. As exciting horse racing might be to people on the LI message boards, hiring people in the real world is a delicate and complicated matter - some of these candidates might not have yet told their current employers, some might have competing offers from other places, and breaching any of that confidentiality would open nls/Sudhir up to serious litigation- not to mention that kind of stupidity might turn away good people. This is further true considering these are government jobs - releasing those kinds of numbers might make for litigation on whether reserved spots are being filled.
You won’t get information from this for at least another week or two. Fortunately - unless you want a job at nls- it’s not anybodies problem for another week or two.
Even if you are required to provide an experience certificate at the application stage ( as opposed to just before hiring) - there is still the possibility of candidates having competing offers - maybe from other universities or research centres or even industry jobs. It just isn’t done.
And sure some students do llms right after their llb- but my experience is that this is limited to class toppers - the rest build up work experience. There are also many universities that make it clear they need work experience from applicants - like Columbia for instance. So I really doubt that there are many people with an llm who can accurately be described as “fresher”.
Words mean something . And in industry parlance a fresher simply means someone who has come right out of university and is applying for their first job. If they have had A JOb before - any job - they are by definition not a fresher.
It is one thing to have demo classes and consult students at a later stage when hiring faculty. Nalsar also does the same thing - many places have demo classes. It is quite another to do so during a recruiting drive at the application stage. Particularly because it would be just too early to have the students weigh in. Typically the hiring process goes - call for applications - shortlisting- interviewing- demo classes- contract negotiation- start date.
And from the timeline laid out on the nls website - they don’t intend to do demo classes- just interview- start date, so it is very unlikely they intend to make this information public knowledge at this stage.
And no - at no university in the world are applications at this stage made public. It would be ridiculous if it was.
And further - even if this information was subject to RTI- which I very much doubt - maybe metadata on how many were interviewed- but no one is entitled to the CVs and applications of individual candidates who applied. But even if this information was subject to RTI- the time taken to file and procure this information would not hurt some of the time sensitive nature of applications I am speaking of. Applicants might not mind so much their names being made public months after they applied - but at the time of application- no way.
You’re just wrong about this.
Why would they want to waste class time giving it to unvetted candidates? Does that make sense ?
And the fresher thing is not my personal experience. No one would call aravind or alok a fresher if they chose to become full on academics tomorrow. Just not how this works. Words mean things. Sorry - but they do. Yes they might have to wait for promotions- but they aren’t freshers.
Corporate espionage is not the only reason to not reveal identities of candidates to the public- if universities want people to work at them they will have to respect their privacy - within reason - it’s just good business.
No university/ organisation in the world is going to release personal individual data on applicants who made it through every step of the way. That is not the standard for transparent or fair hiring- if that were, no one who holds a job would have it cause no one would ever get done with the hiring process.
You can whine all you want - to the rest of us this is clearly not relevant /grounded criticism.
This isn’t to say anyone is scared of questions - just that calls for accountability and questions should be based in reality and not paranoia.
The truth is just by doing this process this way nls has been twice as transparent than the rest of the law schools in the past year. Nalsar and NLUD have routinely hired people without even putting out a public call. The majority of Indian universities do the same.
Eventually nls will tell those who were rejected that they didn’t make it - they don’t owe more than that. If you want to prove discrimination - you need to do it the way people have always done. You prove you’re a member of a protected class, that you were eligible, and that someone not a member of the protected class/ in eligible was hired. You don’t need to know who was shortlisted- you need to know who was hired.
Employment discrimination legislation does not cover “agenda” - if Sudhir wants to only hire NLU alumni - he can do that completely legally. If he only wants to hire right handed people - lefty’s are not a protected class so that would be completely legal also. I will go further - VCs are appointed to further specific research/ institutional agenda- unless you can prove that it is discriminatory toward a particular protected class by approaching authorities/ filing a suit and compelling this information. There is no legal violation. And unless you can prove that the processes pursued by nls in the hiring were discriminatory in impact - say if they only had application materials were only available to those who could climb a mountain 1unless you can prove discrimination in impact- it is completely legal.
As much as those praising Sudhir have an unrealistic idea of what he will be able to accomplish- those criticising him have unrealistic standards from transparency. No hiring committee in the world is gonna meet these standards.
Thank you. Next.
But go ahead and seek vindication in this- just know that when this gets overturned in days you’ll have to eat crow because of your own attitude.
https://www.nls.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Amendment-to-instructions.pdf