“Samajwadi Party ka ye behooda Ahir hai… Aise hi Yadavon ko hum log ganwaar bolte hain. Ganwaar, gadha aur suar ki aulaad hai ye (He is the Samajwadi Party’s ill-mannered Ahir…We call Yadavs like him uncouth. He is uncouth, a donkey and the offspring of a pig).These were the words a Delhi University (DU) political science professor, Sangit Kumar Ragi, used during an ABP News debate on November 3, responding to a Samajwadi Party spokesperson, Manoj Kaka’s comment. He later apologised, saying he did not intend to target an entire community; he was responding to the fellow panelist’s comment during the debate. But his explanation does not answer why caste became so easily available to him as an instrument of humiliation, and what this reveals about the larger entrenched caste prejudices in academic institutions and the effectiveness of their safeguards against discrimination.The professor’s remarks demand serious attention because he holds a teaching position that entrusts him with shaping young minds’ sociopolitical understanding in educational spaces like DU. The professor’s CV lists specialisation in ethnicity and ethnic conflicts, nationalism, Indian political thought, and public administration.His teaching at DU covers Indian government, international relations, governance, and administrative theory. The irony is that a professor claiming expertise in these topics expresses casteist remarks in public without thinking about the consequences of attaching a comment to a particular social group’s name.Framing the entire episode as provoked aggression would certainly reduce caste to a problem of manners and behaviour. Provocation may explain the anger; it cannot justify public humiliation by choosing caste as a language to counter the fellow member. The most unsettling question is now how so-called academic knowledge coexists with social contempt in contemporary Indian universities.Academic qualifications offer no immunity from caste prejudiceA professor can teach Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Gandhi’s ideas of equality and social justice in the classroom while failing to practice them in everyday relationships. The underlying argument here is that academic qualifications offer no automatic immunity from caste prejudice.We must consider his remarks beyond newsroom debates. His institutional authority as a professor at a premier public university makes these remarks more troubling. Faculty members assess students, supervise research, and participate in decisions that shape students’ academic futures. A public expression of casteist abuse therefore raises serious questions about impartiality in academic decisions and everyday university life. These concerns must be understood alongside the ongoing differential treatment and humiliation that students from marginalised castes experience because of their caste identities.The growing number of student suicides from marginalised castes, including Rohith Vemula, a doctoral scholar at the University of Hyderabad, in 2016; Dr Payal Tadvi, a postgraduate medical student in Mumbai, in 2019; Darshan Solanki, a BTech student at IIT Bombay, in 2023; and, most recently, Sahil Wakode, a second-year BTech student at IIT Bombay, on September 18, 2026, have brought persistent concerns about caste-based humiliation and institutional exclusion into public focus. Although the circumstances and findings differ across these cases, the allegations and documented experiences of discrimination demand serious scrutiny of campus environments and the institutional safeguards meant to protect marginalized students.This follows the recurring controversy in faculty recruitment, where candidates from marginalised caste backgrounds are declared “Not Found Suitable (NFS)”. N. Sukumar’s has written extensively about this issue; he argued that “What has seldom been acknowledged in the recruitment process are the ideological affiliations of the institutions/candidates. This is also a major reason for candidates being declared NFS. In the majority of the selection committees, experts constitute a small pool, belonging to the dominant communities, while exercising their caste and gender privileges.”According to a report in The Indian Express, DU departments advertised 272 assistant professor vacancies, 246 associate professor vacancies, and 107 professor vacancies during the 2022-2025 recruitment cycle. DU filled 233, 79, and 23 posts, respectively. A total of 79 posts – 10 assistant professor, 41 associate professor, and 28 professor positions – were declared NFS.These included 17 posts reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), 13 for Scheduled Tribes (ST), and 21 for Other Backward Classes (OBC), alongside other categories. Such discriminatory recruitment practices illustrate how caste prejudices manifest when casteist faculty serve on recruitment committees. The simple concern is how marginalised caste applicants can expect a just and fair procedure when casteist faculty members decide who is worthy and credible to become faculty.The intent here is not to prove that someone’s remarks endorse discrimination against any applicant or that a particular selection committee acted unconstitutionally. One thing is certain: they expose the danger of accepting judgments of academic authorities as a testament to impartiality. If a senior professor can express caste prejudices publicly, then institutions must show how they keep them out of confidential assessments. We must ask here: Who defines the criteria of suitability? What reasons substantiate rejections? Can those reasons withstand an independent scrutiny process? There will be no credibility of “merit” when people who judge it remain beyond examination.This is also where we must investigate the ideological commitments and academic accountability. Whatever their political or intellectual affiliations, faculty members should be accountable to the same standards of equal treatment. Universities must explain how they uphold those standards when public statements raise concerns about prejudice. By contrast, a series of incidents has seen faculty members terminated for their orientation toward non-ruling ideology because they wrote or said something in public that runs counter to the current government and university administration.The episode also raises wider questions about academic freedom and the institutional conditions necessary for critical inquiry. Universities across states are facing pressure over who can teach what, and what students may study. For instance, DU’s Academic Council approved curriculum changes that removed papers such as “Pakistan and the World; China’s Role in the Contemporary World; Islam and International Relations; Pakistan: State and Society; and Religious Nationalism and Political Violence” from the postgraduate program in various social science disciplines.Universities face an institutional problemMy concern is that drawing boundaries around critical inquiry and tolerating public prejudices can weaken the very essential capacity of university spaces to confront uncomfortable questions. Universities face an institutional problem whenever ideological conformity takes precedence over intellectual accountability.People outside academia should seriously reflect on the DU professor’s remarks. Families send the younger generation to universities, hoping that education will enlarge their understanding of the nation and society. Students see teaching faculty as legitimate authorities on the subject, and their public conduct can validate even caste prejudices, making them seem respectable and a matter of pride. Educational institutions therefore cannot leave caste contempt unaddressed; if they do, it reaches beyond the classroom boundaries and affirms humiliation compatible with prestige. Our task now is to ensure that universities remain spaces for critical inquiry, dignity, equality, and learning across cultural, political, and social differences.Vidyasagar Sharma is a doctoral researcher in Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany.