Academic Freedom and Democratic Leadership: Autonomy versus Accountability

Moderator: Professor Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Professor & Executive Dean, Jindal School of Journalism and Communication, O.P. Jindal Global University, India

Prof. Kishalay Bhattacharjee is a senior journalist who has reported widely from India’s conflict zones for over two decades. He books include Che in Paona Bazaar: Tales of Exile and Belonging from India’s Northeast (Pan Macmillan India, 2013), Blood on My Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters (Harper Collins India, 2015) and most recently An Unfinished Revolution: A Hostage Crisis, Adivasi Resistance and the Naxal Movement (Pan Macmillan India, 2017). He was the first and only recipient of the Penguin Randomshouse Writers Residency Award (2016). He has received several awards including the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award (2006-7) for his coverage of internally displaced people. His coverage of the abduction and rescue of two Italian tourists was nominated for the best current affairs programme by Association of International Broadcasting (AIB) Awards in 2013. He has made many television documentaries, one of which, Santi, Lucy and Thoibi, was screened at international festivals in Goa and Barcelona. Prof. Kishalay Bhattacharjee was selected Chair of internal security and a senior fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in 2011.He was selected a Panos Fellow for HIV/AIDS (2007) and an Edward Murrow Fellow in Journalism (2006). He writes and speaks regularly on conflict, post conflict situations, media and politics and is the founder curator of ArtEast-a festival of art and livelihood held annually at the India International Centre, New Delhi. He is the executive director of Reachout Foundation that researches on scope and extent of understanding ethnic and racial discrimination. He edits a portal Ourstories, through which he has been working on capacity building of grassroots journalists across South Asia. Bhattacharjee also taught in the department of English in a number of colleges under North Eastern Hill University. He currently teaches in the School of Journalism and Communication at O.P. Jindal Global (Institution of Eminence Deemed To Be University), Sonipat, Haryana.