Professor Samina Luthfa of the Department of Sociology at the University of Dhaka staged a five-minute silent protest in her classroom on Sunday, covering her mouth with a black cloth to protest attempts to curtail teachers’ freedom in the classroom and the alleged harassment of teachers for expressing dissent.
She staged the protest on Sunday, 11 October, and later described it in a post on her personal Facebook account.
In the post, Professor Samina Luthfa wrote that a planned conspiracy to undermine teachers’ freedom in the classroom was eroding trust in teacher-student relationships.
She said she had staged the protest in solidarity with teachers who had faced harassment for expressing dissent or speaking out.
Samina Luthfa also wrote that she had discussed and established a “code of conduct” with her students in the class. They discussed what could and could not be done in the classroom without permission and how disagreements should be resolved. She then sat silently for five minutes with a black cloth covering her mouth.
At the end of her post, Professor Samina Luthfa called on everyone to “reclaim the classroom”.
Earlier, on 7 October, a controversy arose over a discussion between Associate Professor Tasneem Siraj Mahboob of the Department of English at the University of Dhaka and a female student wearing a niqab during a class for final-semester postgraduate students.
Following a written complaint from students, an emergency meeting of the department on 8 October decided to bar the teacher from conducting classes. The courses she had been teaching were also redistributed among other teachers.