Taliban leader listed as 'supporter' of anti-Hindutva conference alongside Rutgers professor
A resurfaced archive lists the Taliban’s chief alongside a Rutgers professor as supporters of a 2021 conference.
The finding coincides with criticism of a Rutgers report that critics say unfairly targets Hindu American groups.
A newly resurfaced archive from a 2021 “Dismantling Global Hindutva” conference lists Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada among its supposed academic “supporters,” placing him on the same roster as Rutgers University professor Audrey Truschke.
The document’s emergence follows criticism of a report published by the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, which Truschke co-authored with professor Sahar Aziz. The report characterizes Hindu American organizations as aligned with what it labels exclusionary or anti-Muslim ideologies.
The conference focused on Hindutva, a term translated as “Hinduness,” referring to ideas that emphasize Hindu cultural identity, heritage, or political self-representation. While the term’s meaning ranges from cultural pride to broader civic or national identity, academics on the political left routinely portray Hindutva as synonymous with “majoritarianism” or authoritarian politics.
The discovery, made public on Nov. 12 by the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA), comes as Truschke led a separate campus event titled “Hindutva in America: A Threat to Equality and Religious Pluralism” on Oct. 27.
Archived promotional materials for the 2021 conference listed hundreds of alleged academic supporters. Among them was Akhundzada, who has led the Taliban since 2016 and assumed control of Afghanistan on Aug 15, 2021.
The 2021 conference framed its programming through themes of “white supremacy,” “Islamophobia,” and South Asian politics. The progressive ideological framework guiding the conference may help explain how a Taliban leader’s name went unexamined for years.
CoHNA notes that Akhundzada’s name remained on the publicly promoted supporter list for years without acknowledgement from organizers. Campus Reform reviewed the archived document, which remains accessible through public internet archives.
In a statement provided to Campus Reform, a spokesperson for CoHNA said: “For over four years, the Taliban leader’s name has been sitting on the list that was proudly touted by the academics who organized the Dismantling Global Hindutva. This illustrates the lax ‘academic due diligence’ that goes into such endorsements, conferences, and research reports.”
The spokesperson went on to tell Campus Reform about how the list also contains those with a history of serious “Hinduphobic” views, along with associations with lifelong Communists who sympathize with violent Maoist groups in India.
”Some of them are not even academics — rather, radical left-wing activists who have made a career out of attacking Hindus,” the spokesperson continued.
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Truschke told Campus Reform that she “was not involved in organizing the 2021 Dismantling Global Hindutva conference or in vetting the names that appeared on the list of 1,100+ academic supporters” and that “any suggestion to the contrary is false and defamatory.”
Campus Reform contacted Rutgers University and the Center for Security, Race, and Rights for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
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