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This book is an unique effort in which teachers of Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), India, meditate on a vision of higher education, which is reflective, critical as well as empathetic, and in which, the subjective context of every student’s life matters. The spirit of the book lies in the openness and authenticity with which the writers have expressed their deeper strivings and dilemmas of being teachers and practising challenging modes of relating with students both within and outside of the classroom. In the twenty six essays that bedeck this volume, teachers of AUD, self-reflexively re-examine the purpose and ethics involved in their profession.

It is with love that the contributors to this volume weave in a beautiful pattern in the tapestry of higher education as they sing a song that includes the often missing notations of empathy in their reflections on higher education. A melody emerges as teaching is re-envisioned as an intellectual, humane and relational process; an intense and involved immersive experience, charged with desire, devotion and inspiration, impelling one to the freedom of spirit, to the acknowledgement of past emotional scars even as newer versions of self are born in the classroom (and disavowed ones reclaimed) through the mutual and dialogical exchange between the teacher and her students. Such a mode of teaching is also clearly radical and political in its intent. It challenges the competitive and consumerist ethos of our historical times wherein the classroom is endangered by the dictates of privatization and the demands of the market.