28 Jul 2025 | Americas, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine, United States
In a story of censorship that spans two continents, it was revealed this week that an entire body of scholarly work was cancelled by the Harvard Educational Review (HER) shortly before publication. The work focused on ‘education and Palestine’ and its raison d’être was paramount: Since the war in Gaza started the educational system there has been decimated. All schools have been closed for children for almost two years, and almost 90% of schools will require reconstruction or major work to be functional. Every university in the strip has been partially or fully destroyed too, as have the Central Archives of Gaza, containing 150 years’ worth of documentation, in addition to every ministerial archive of official records. The scholar Henry A Giroux called the destruction “deliberate … part of a broader effort to annihilate Palestinian history and identity”. He used the term (employed by others too) “scholasticide”.
The HER special issue was a response to this, and was going to cover topics including the annihilation of Gaza’s schools. It was due to be published this summer. Contracts had apparently been finalised and articles edited. Then on 9 June, the Harvard Education Publishing Group, the journal’s publisher, cancelled the release. The publisher cited “a number of complex issues”, including the need for “considerable copy editing” and certain legal checks. They claim the cancellation was not “due to censorship of a particular viewpoint”.
Others disagree. “Even within the broader landscape around Palestine in the university, it’s unprecedented. You just don’t solicit work, peer-review it, have people sign contracts, advertise the articles, and then cancel not just one article, but an entire special issue,” said Professor Chandni Desai, author of one of the articles, in The Guardian.
It’s impossible to ignore the wider US context too. Since October 2023 US universities have come under pressure over accusations of tolerating antisemitism on campuses. Many have responded by restricting pro-Palestine speech and scholarship, as we reported here.
But the story goes beyond Palestine. After Donald Trump’s win in November, Index contributing editor, the academic Emma Briant, asked whether academic freedom would survive Trump 2.0. It’s too early to say definitively. What we can say though is it’s being extremely tested. Everyone is familiar by now with the attacks to Columbia University – stripped of funding and given a list of demands, including external oversight for certain academic departments – and of Harvard resisting only to be punished too. Add to these big picture stories smaller ones – academic journals accused by officials of “bias”, threats to ban scientists from publishing in leading peer-reviewed medical journals, government subscriptions to several leading journals ended. Another story from this week: a new government investigation into Harvard’s exchange programme.
Against these two backdrops – a devasted Gazan education system and an embattled US one – an important project to save research on Palestine has been stopped. The knowledge economy is much poorer for it.
28 Apr 2025 | Asia and Pacific, India, News and features, Volume 54.01 Spring 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
When a 31-year-old trainee doctor was found raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College in the east Indian state of Kolkata last August, outrage swept across the campus. She had fallen asleep in a seminar room after a 36-hour shift and her body was discovered the next day.
Students and other women poured into the streets in their thousands to demand justice, but their voices were quickly stifled. Police detained them, and those who spoke out found themselves under scrutiny.
The incident was not an aberration. For many in the country, this tragedy accentuated an unsettling truth: in India’s universities, victims of sexual assault – and those who support them – are often silenced.
Despite laws designed to protect women from harassment, many students and activists say the country’s universities have systemic flaws that allow sexual violence to persist.
Across India, students, activists and faculty members describe a culture where voices challenging sexual violence are suppressed to protect the institutions’ reputations.
Shabnam Hashmi, a prominent activist based in New Delhi, believes this silencing reflects India’s deep-rooted patriarchy, worsened by institutional apathy and the government’s preference for symbolic gestures over substantive change.
“Until we challenge the structures that protect perpetrators and shame victims, nothing will change,” she said. “Real change begins not only with enforcing laws but with reshaping how we view honour and accountability.”
She added that even if victims spoke out, they – not the perpetrators – were held responsible.
In Indian society, victims of sexual harassment often face intense scrutiny and blame while perpetrators are shielded by deeply entrenched patriarchal norms. Instead of holding the harasser accountable, society frequently shifts its focus to the victim, questioning her behaviour, clothing or character. Social honour is often tied to women’s bodies, leading survivors to prioritise reputation over justice and discouraging them from speaking out.
Institutional silence
Riya (not her real name), a student at a private university in Haryana, knows firsthand the consequences of speaking up. After a classmate pressured her into sharing intimate photos and then blackmailed her, she wanted to report him. But fear stopped her.
“I was scared [the authorities] would see me as the problem,” she told Index. “I didn’t think they would help me. My family would have been humiliated and people would just talk.”
Her fears had a strong basis. Even though the Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (PoSH) Act mandates that all institutions should establish internal complaints committees (ICCs) to handle cases of sexual harassment, many universities either do not have these committees or fail to give them meaningful authority.
“PoSH committees usually only make recommendations,” Hashmi said. “They are expected to take action, but the administration often intervenes to protect the institution’s image.”
This leaves victims with limited avenues for recourse, and for many students the price of speaking out is simply too high.
The problem extends beyond insufficient resources and into a broader culture of institutional suppression. At Delhi University, external ICC member Vibha Chaturvedi said that many students didn’t know how to navigate the complaints process – and when they did, they were often discouraged.
“There is an incredible reluctance to go through the formal process,” she said. “Students fear retaliation, ridicule and even academic penalties if they come forward.”
Tanisha (not her real name), a student from a prestigious college in Maharashtra, recalls her ordeal with a professor who sexually harassed her.
“I was terrified to report him,” she said. “I thought no one would believe me, and the college would protect him. I was very scared. I thought they would think it was somehow my fault, because that is the usual response everywhere.”
The concern over protecting the institution’s image is so pervasive that students are often actively discouraged from making complaints in the first place.
“From students to faculty to administration, everyone indirectly suggests against raising formal complaints,” Tanisha said.
Symbolic policies
The government’s approach to women’s safety in recent years has been marked by high-profile initiatives, such as the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save the Girl Child, Educate the Girl Child) campaign, which has now been running for a decade. Its aim is to reduce gender discrimination and to educate people about gender bias. Yet critics argue that these campaigns prioritise optics over action. Nearly 80% of its funds have been spent on media campaigns, with limited impact on ground-level support for women’s safety.
“These policies are just slogans,” said Hashmi. “They are meant to make it look like something’s being done [but have no] follow-through.
“We are seeing more censorship, more silencing of dissent and an overall lack of prioritisation for women’s safety. It’s a culture of complicity, where the perpetrator is shielded and the victim is blamed.”
Hashmi believes the government’s reluctance to seriously address harassment stems from a larger resistance to challenging patriarchy.
“These are just symbolic gestures by a government that is itself intrinsically conservative and anti-women, and doesn’t believe in their freedom or freedom of expression,” she said.
India faces severe challenges in safeguarding women against sexual harassment and violence, and despite more than 30,000 cases of reported rape every year, low conviction rates hinder their safety and justice. Slow judicial processes prevent many survivors from pursuing charges, while delayed trials often result in insufficient evidence and witness withdrawal, making convictions rare.
Legislative measures such as the 2013 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, which introduced harsher penalties for sexual violence, have not translated into consistent enforcement.
The situation has grown worse under prime minister Narendra Modi’s administration, many activists argue, as political attention on women’s safety has waned.
“We are seeing more censorship, more silencing and an overall dismissal of women’s safety as a priority,” said Hashmi. “It’s a climate of fear and complicity.”
The cost of challenging harassment can be high. For Riya, the student from Haryana, simply sharing her story with friends took courage – and she still feels haunted by the experience.
“I want to tell others to speak up, but I understand why they don’t,” she said. “It is like you are putting yourself on trial. The shame is on us, even when we are the ones hurt.”
Mary E John, co-head of the Saksham Task Force, knows all too well the delicate balance of power that exists within academic institutions. Established by the government in 2013 in response to the brutal 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder of a medical student, the task force aims to enhance safety for women on campuses and promote gender sensitivity.
She emphasised the hesitance many students felt when confronted with the daunting task of lodging complaints against their institutions.
“Students often feel they lack independence when they have to complain against the institution’s power dynamics,” she told Index. This fear of retaliation, she notes, often leads to silence.
The challenges for victims escalate when the alleged harassers hold positions of power, such as professors or administrators. Different power dynamics in academic institutions prevent student survivors from reporting harassment.
“I am terrified my grades would suffer, or people would think I am exaggerating,” Tanisha said.
As university campuses continue to grapple with the pervasive issue of sexual harassment, it is clear that a seismic shift in cultural attitudes and institutional responses is long overdue.
The increasing number of heinous cases of sexual harassment on campuses and subsequent protests may have sparked national conversations, but they have rarely translated into tangible action. The cycle only repeats itself.
29 Nov 2023 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, News and features
It is accepted around the world that children and young people have a right to education. But for girls in Afghanistan, this is not the case.
In 2021, the Taliban seized power after launching a military offensive which lasted three and a half months. One of the first measures they imposed was a ban on girls over the age of 12 returning to school. A year later, they extended this ban to include universities, leaving millions of Afghan girls without any access to higher education at all.
Accessing education was already a struggle prior to the Taliban’s return to power due to the scarcity and inadequacy of learning facilities for girls. It is estimated that 30% of girls in the country have never even entered primary school. Now, in light of the current ban, receiving education beyond this will be close to impossible.
The Begum Academy has been launched in an attempt to combat this.
The Begum Academy is an online platform aimed at female students from seventh to twelfth grade, which offers the entire Afghan curriculum free of charge by subject based on the official school books from the Ministry of Education. The idea behind the initiative is that girls will be able to teach themselves the Afghan school curriculum from their own homes in order to improve their future prospects even if they aren’t allowed to physically attend school.
A spokesperson for the organisation, who preferred not to be named, spoke to Index about the importance of this movement for a country with the lowest ranking for women’s inclusion, justice and security in the world.
“If you take into account Covid and the Taliban in power at the moment, girls have been out of school for basically five years,” he explained.
“The idea is to give them hope. To be a girl in Afghanistan today is hell. There’s absolutely no future. The idea for us is to say okay, you’re forbidden to go to school, you’re not forbidden to learn.”
The platform contains more than 8,000 videos from a team of teachers and producers covering the entire school curriculum in Dari and Pashto, chapter by chapter, which took many months to put together.
“Recording videos, editing them, working the content. It’s an enormous task,” admitted the Begum Academy correspondent. “Everybody told us that it was crazy, that it was impossible. We decided to go for it.”
The group is also endeavouring to break down other barriers faced by those in Afghanistan who want to learn, such as the lack of internet access in a number of homes across the country. They note that this is an issue they are actively “working on” to try and ensure that as many girls as possible are able to access the resources provided.
This is a sizeable task. Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, internet connection in the state has been limited. Gallup’s 2022 World Poll found that just 15% of the Afghan population said they have access to the internet. This is potentially due to costs of Wi-Fi or electronics considering more than 90% of the country’s population is affected by poverty.
There is also a significant gender disparity when it comes to internet access, with only 6% of women having access compared to 25% of men. Those living in cities were also more likely to use the internet than those in rural areas.
Thankfully, the Taliban do not seem to have any plans to ban the internet completely. They even use the internet, which they previously rallied against due to their suspicions of what they deemed to be Western technology, to communicate with the world on social media.
According to a 2023 report by the Atlantic Council, the approximate $77 million in taxes collected by the Afghan government from internet and mobile phone operators since taking over is a crucial source of income. The Taliban have even announced plans to upgrade to 4G networks – a hopeful sign on the internet access front.
However, the Taliban have also been accused of limiting internet access for their own gain, allegedly suspending connectivity in Kabul and other areas on a regular basis in order to curb opposition, as well as blocking millions of websites for “immoral” content. There is therefore a fear that even if internet access is available, the militant group can restrict the content available on it.
Nonprofit group Access Now, who advocate for digital rights, warns that even those who can access Google in Afghanistan are restricted by the fear of surveillance due to the ability of the Taliban to monitor browser history. Debilitating internet speeds and frequent power cuts may also hinder proceedings.
Despite concerns about the accessibility of the platform in the long-term, the overall feeling regarding the Begum Academy’s launch is positive today.
“We still have a lot of things to do, but I think this project can genuinely help,” the platform’s spokesperson said. “Once the word has spread, and it’s started already on social media, we can expect something quite big.”
You can find the Begum Academy here: https://begum-academy.org/fa/
You can also access online materials on their YouTube channels:
https://www.youtube.com/@Begum.Academy1/playlists (Pashto)
https://www.youtube.com/@begum.academy/playlists (Dari)
26 Oct 2023 | Afghanistan, News and features
Today, Matiullah Wesa walked out of an Afghan prison. The co-founder of Pen Path, an organisation forging routes to education in Afghanistan, has spent the last seven months behind bars. Only recently has his mother been allowed to visit him.
Until 27 March this year, Wesa was riding a motorbike around Afghanistan, a bookcase and computer built into the mobile classroom, to areas where schools do not exist. He read from books to cohorts of girls, locked out of education. And he campaigned for schools to reopen. All of these activities put him in the spotlight.
On his way home from evening prayer seven months ago, Wesa was arrested. Then his house was raided. For much of his imprisonment, Wesa’s family were not allowed to speak with him. Today, his brother and co-founder of Pen Path, Attaullah Wesa, spoke to Index from Toronto about the news. He too is at risk from his work with Pen Path, and arrived in Canada in September.
“I am so happy. I couldn’t sleep last night, I was waking with Matiullah in my dreams. But I don’t know about [the lack] of sleep, I feel very well,” he said.
“I spoke to him when he came out from the jail, just for two minutes — ‘Hi, how are you, how was the jail?’ He told me, ‘No problem,’” Attaullah Wesa said, able to make light of the situation. Some other family members are now with him, and he will now go for health checks. “He looks in good spirit.”
An hour before his brother’s release, Attaullah Wesa had a phone call from his brother, telling him what was about to happen.
Since Matiullah Wesa was released earlier today, his brother’s phone has rung constantly, with messages of congratulations. Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai called him personally to tell him how happy he was. Further calls came from members of parliament around the world, human rights organisations and the press. The international community, he explained, has put a lot of pressure on the Taliban about his brother’s imprisonment.
Pen Path was established in 2009 to create greater access to education, and make sure all children have access to learning and books. Since the Taliban takeover, this job has become more and more difficult, with access to education for women and girls becoming a priority. During the recent earthquakes near Herat, Pen Path have forged on, speaking with people in affected areas about their needs.
This work has continued this year, but without Matiullah Wesa. Just last week, he was announced as the winner of the campaigning category of the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards. With Wesa behind bars, his brother sent a video message to receive the award, saying that the award was vital in “Letting Matiullah know that he is remembered and won’t be forgotten.”
Baroness Helena Kennedy took to the stage in London to announce Wesa as the winner, echoing the voices of campaigners inside Afghanistan who are calling the current situation a gender apartheid. She said: “It’s very important that we don’t forget Afghanistan.”
With his brother out of prison, Pen Path will continue its work, Attaullah Wesa explains.
“Now we will start in a good spirit, because now the international community knows more about us,” he said. “We will also come with the international community and we will deal some pressure to the Taliban to accept the basic right of girls and women of Afghanistan.”
He ends the call to Index with a message: “For those social activists who are in the prison of the Taliban, they must release them soon.”
