United States: Vax resistance crisis

The persistent partisan split in the US over COVID is increasingly dividing higher education over vaccination rules, stimulating protests, lawsuits, resignations, infections and renewed migration to online teaching. As with the broader battle lines in US society, the fight against requiring proof of vaccination status is most prevalent in politically conservative areas, often involving local governments forbidding such rules. The showdowns include faculty resignations or departures at Louisiana State University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Alabama, the University of North Georgia and Middle Tennessee State University. On the other side, several institutions have been sued by students for mandating vaccination on their campuses, including California State University, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut and the University of Indiana. At some universities, even mandatory masking is too much. Clemson University and the University of South Carolina are among institutions where academic staff protested and sued just to win the right to expect facial coverings on their students.   Richard Creswick, professor of physics and astronomy at South Carolina who won a state Supreme Court ruling in favour of the mask requirement, says he cannot understand the opposition. “What is shocking to me”, says Creswick, whose wife is immune compromised as a result of cancer treatments, “is that some South Carolina politicians will sacrifice the health and lives of South Carolina citizens solely to further their political careers by pandering to and misleading their base on the efficacy of masks”. Jeremy Fischer abandoned his tenured position as associate professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama rather than teach in the absence of mandatory student vaccinations. To do otherwise, he says “might render me complicit in a moral atrocity,” he says. While he and other departing professors might not get their jobs back, proponents of fundamental public health measures on college campuses are seen as likely to win ultimately, both legally and politically. The universities of Connecticut and Indiana have already successfully defended their right to demand proof of vaccinations on their campuses, and legal experts say they expect others to prevail as well, given past US Supreme Court rulings on public safety. Now without a job, Fischer says state politicians, university leaders who don’t stand up to them and fellow faculty who are also failing to demand basic health and safety policies, are equally to blame. “A sense of futility among academic instructors, staff and students, is perhaps the biggest obstacle to change,” he adds. Also read: Covid 19 vaccine for children: Is India way behind? Anti-Hindutva coalition Censorship fears related to Hindu nationalism, or hindutva, have driven some US-based academics to mobilise into a new activist group and organise a major academic conference. The South Asia Scholar Activist Collective (SASAC) was launched in July with founding members from eight US universities. Its first action has been to publish a Hindutva Harassment Field Manual to help academics targeted by the Hindu right wing, and also as a resource for university staff or managements who want to learn about the…