Wokeness appears to be infiltrating India’s premier tech institutions, as seen at the recent IIT-Madras convocation ceremony. A top mechanical engineering student used his award-acceptance speech to claim STEM fields, alleging they were being exploited to serve imperial powers like Israel. His anti-Semitic remarks have sparked concerns about the ideologies influencing young minds in such esteemed institutions.
IIT-M Convocation
The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) celebrated its 61st convocation on 19 July 2024 at its campus in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. This year, 3,016 degrees were awarded, including Joint and Dual Degrees. A total of 444 PhDs were conferred, encompassing PhDs, joint degree PhDs with foreign institutions, and dual degree PhDs.
Degrees were awarded to 2,636 graduates, including 764 BTechs (27 with Honours), 277 Dual-Degree BTech and MTech, 481 MTech, 151 MSc, 42 MA, 50 Executive MBA, 84 MBA, 236 MS, and 107 Web-enabled MTech for executives. Among the PhD recipients, seven joint degrees were awarded to universities in countries like Australia, Singapore, France, and Germany.
The Chief Guest, Dr. Brian K. Kobilka, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (2012), addressed the convocation. Dr. Pawan Goenka, Chairman of the Board of Governors, IIT Madras, presided over the event with Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, faculty, staff, and students.
In his speech, Dr Kobilka congratulated the graduates and emphasised that his success was due to hard work, persistence, luck, and support from family, friends, and colleagues. He shared five key factors contributing to his career: finding his passion, having mentors, recognising and leveraging his strengths and weaknesses, maintaining a work-life balance, and learning from failures.
Dr. Kobilka highlighted his 21-year journey to obtaining structures of G-protein-coupled receptors in active/inactive states, which ultimately led to his Nobel Prize. He reflected on the many lessons learned from his failed experiments during this period.
Dhananjay Balakrishnan
At this time, Dhananjay Balakrishnan, a student from the Mechanical Engineering department, was awarded the Governor’s Prize for the best overall proficiency in curricular and extracurricular activities in Dual Degree.
In his acceptance speech for the award at the IIT-M convocation ceremony, Balakrishnan, who pursued an interdisciplinary dual degree in mechanical engineering and data science, made a statement that would remind us of Ashoka University’s convocation. He said he would be doing great injustice to himself and what he believes in.
He said, “This is a call for action. There is a mass genocide going on in Palestine. People are dying in vast numbers and there is no visible end in sight. Why should we be bothered by this you ask? Because STEM as a field in itself has historically been used to advance the ulterior motives of the imperial powers such as Israel. As engineering students, we work very hard to get top-level jobs at tech giants which offer very lucrative pays and great benefits. However, these tech giants control various aspects of our lives today as you know better than anyone. Many of these prestigious companies are also directly and indirectly implicated in the war against Palestine by providing the state of Israel with technology, technology that is used to kill.”
He further said, “There are no easy solutions and I don’t have all the answers but I do know this. As engineers graduating into the real world, it is our job to be aware of the consequences of the work we do and also to interrogate our own position in these complex systems of power imbalance. I hope that we can incorporate this awareness more into our daily lives attempting to understand what we can do to liberate the oppressed on lines of caste, class, creed, and gender. I believe that is the first step to curb the never-ending cycle of suffering.”
It was assumed that IITs are not as woke as other universities like JNU, Ashoka, or Jamia Milia Islamia. However, this instance indicates that wokeness has seeped into IITs, the very roots , especially IIT Madras, in the STEM field.
(with inputs from Indian Express)
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