‘A full circle from PhD scholar to V-C; want JNU to hit new highs’

Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit taught at the department of politics and public administration at the Savitribai Phule Pune University for 30 years, before replacing Prof M Jagadeesh Kumar

Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, 59, the first woman vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), said she has “come a full circle” from being a PhD student at the institute to her appointment as its Vice-Chancellor (VC) on Monday.

Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit.

Pandit taught at the department of politics and public administration at the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU; formerly University of Pune) for 30 years, before replacing Prof M Jagadeesh Kumar, who was appointed the chairperson of the University Grants Commission (UGC) last week.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia (then called Leningrad in the erstwhile USSR) in 1962, Pandit completed her schooling in Chennai (then Madras) after her parents moved to the Tamil Nadu capital. Her father, Dhulipudi Anjaneyulu, is an author, journalist and a retired civil servant. Her mother, Adilakshmi Mulamoodi, was a professor of Tamil and Telugu at the then Leningrad Oriental Faculty Department.

Pandit’s colleagues at SPPU said she has immense expertise in the subjects she teaches. SPPU vice-chancellor Nitin Karmalkar said, “It is a proud moment for us. We are happy for Prof Pandit. I congratulate her on the new responsibility and wish her luck.”

According to her official faculty page on the SPPU website, Pandit, after completing her Master of Arts (MA) in political science from Presidency College, Madras University in 1985, joined JNU for her predoctoral degree and completed her MPhil in international relations. She also did her PhD in international relations where her thesis was titled “Parliament and Foreign Policy in India – The Nehru Years”.

“I am taking charge today at JNU and I thank everyone as there are very few women VCs in the country. I am committed to good academic standards and gender equality. I thank everybody who has supported me in reaching here,” she said in a phone interview.

At JNU, she said, her aim is to “take academics and research to the next level while building alternative Indic narratives”. She said, “JNU should lead in building this narrative. We have very good faculty and we will bring in more people from all over India. We want to be a representation of the entire county. We should be inclusive, and we must display unity in diversity.”

Pandit’s first teaching assignment was in Goa University in 1988. Four years later, she joined as a lecturer at the then University of Pune’s (now SPPU) politics and public administration department. According to her university profile, she has awarded the “Woman Educator of the Year” award by the Chennai-based Youth Forum for Gandhian Studies in 2003 and the “Wisetex Award for Women Leaders in the next Decade (Education)” in 2004.

Pandit said, “It’s been a long time at SPPU, and I am the first faculty member from Pune University to go to a Central university as vice-chancellor. My inspiration is Savitribai Phule as it was because of her girls are able to study today. She was the pioneer in women’s education, and it is with her blessings that I have come to JNU as its VC.”

Her appointment sparked a social media storm after her posts on the microblogging site Twitter targeting political parties, farmers, and religious minorities emerged. On May 22, 2021, she tagged a video featuring Congress president Sonia Gandhi meeting a foreign delegation twice and called her “an arrogant remote control” in one tweet and “an Italian remote control” in another. The same day, she quote-tweeted another post on the farmers’ agitation calling them “parasitic middlemen”.