The Delhi University has denied professor and political commentator Apoorvanand leave to attend an academic event hosted by a think tank in New York later this month.

Apoorvanand had sought leave to participate in the 20th anniversary celebrations of the India China Institute at The New School in New York from April 23 to May 1. He was slated to speak on the topic “The university under a global authoritarian turn” during the visit, The Indian Express reported.

The university administration demanded that Apoorvanand, a professor in the Hindi department, should submit the text of his proposed talk before his travel clearance could be considered. When he refused to comply, the university denied him permission to attend the event.

The professor said that although he applied for leave over 35 days in advance via the university’s online portal, his application remained pending with the registrar for a month. When he followed up, he was informed the matter would be referred to the Union education ministry.

In a letter to Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh, Apoorvanand said he told the registrar that as per his knowledge, there was no rule that required government permission for a faculty member to be granted leave.

“He [registrar] agreed that he himself was not aware of a rule like this,” the professor said in the letter. “Then I asked him if there was any precedent which could justify this move by the university to send my leave application to the ministry for advice/clearance. He admitted that during his tenure this was the first such case.”

Apoorvanand said he later received a letter from the assistant registrar, dated April 2 and delivered by hand on April 4, repeating the request for the text of his talk as a condition for processing his leave application. In response, he reiterated that there was no legal basis for such a demand. However, he did not receive a reply.

In the letter to the vice-chancellor, Apoorvanand said that the university’s act of demanding the text of his proposed talk amounted to censorship, and urged the administration to uphold academic freedom.

“The whole episode has anguished me as I felt that decades of teaching and writing of a faculty member are of no value in the eyes of the administration as it does not even think it necessary to acknowledge letters and mails from them,” Jha said in his email to Singh. “You would agree that it is humiliating for a teacher.”

“I fail to understand what made the university decide to forgo the principle of institutional autonomy and invite the intervention of an outside agency, in this case the union government in a matter of granting leave to a faculty member,” Jha further said.

A unidentified university official told The Indian Express that the move to consult the ministry was made “in light of the international context”.

“We don’t usually approach the ministry, but in this case, we thought it would be best to take their advice,” the official told the newspaper. “We asked him to share a copy of his speech, but he did not.”