– The NotA Collective

Recently, “The Mine Field,”¹ a powerful testimonial that was published in NotA, received many heartfelt responses. Two of particular interest to us were those from faculty members in Indian institutes.^2,3 Since one of the prime purposes of this publication is to start a conversation about life in Indian academia specifically and academia more broadly, we must begin by thanking them for participating.

What follows is more than 1000 words in response to a couple of tweets from months ago. This is somewhat self-evidently ridiculous. We would like to offer the following in the spirit of countering harmful ideas that we thought were reflected in the tweets, while fully acknowledging that it is unreasonable to assume that these 140 characters, or what we read into them, is a reflection of the authors’ true opinions.