The ‘Academic Refugee’: When Classrooms Become Borderlines

Not all refugees cross borders.

Some sit quietly in seminar halls, flipping through marked-up drafts, smiling through silences, and shrinking with each passive-aggressive "suggestion" from those who were supposed to guide them.

This blog is not a revenge tale. It’s a reckoning. A story of a scholar who entered academia with reverence and left with scars — not from intellectual battles, but from invisible power wars waged behind staffroom doors.

If you've ever felt out of place in a place that was supposed to nurture your voice, this is for you.
If you've ever been punished for not choosing sides in a game you never signed up for, this is your mirror.

Here’s a dispatch from one such war zone — where degrees are earned not just through research, but resilience.
Welcome to the story of an ‘Academic Refugee.’

They say a PhD journey is lonely.
But what happens when it turns into exile?

This is the story of an academic refugee — not someone fleeing nations, but someone fleeing silence, sabotage, and the subtle gaslighting within ivory towers.

She woke up that morning with a heart full of hope and a saree picked with care. Today was the day of her Open Defence. A moment she had dreamed of for five long years. A day meant for celebration, closure, and crowning achievement.

She had come to this institution from a faraway land, carrying a backpack of dreams. Academia was her calling. The curriculum, the lectures, the rich debates — it all felt like a sacred ceremony. Her teachers were bright, her mind, set ablaze with questions. Among them stood her supervisor — the brightest of the lot. Brilliant, articulate, widely respected. She thought she had struck gold.

But rainbows can hide storm clouds.

In the beginning, it felt like belonging. But slowly, she began to feel the heat — not of inspiration, but interrogation. Her only crime? Maintaining intellectual friendships that didn’t pass her supervisor’s loyalty test. She hadn’t picked sides. She had only held on to the motto she was raised with: Mata, Pita, Guru, Daivam — respect for all her teachers.

But that wasn't how power worked here.

One day it was a cold shoulder. The next, a public slight. Soon it was a flood of passive aggression that soaked into everything — comments red-inked with venom, meetings that ended with veiled threats, emails that vanished, and feedback that never came.

Her world, once electric with thought, became a space of surveillance.

Her dreams of research turned into nightmares of restraint. Her thesis, the one she once loved, felt like a heavy burden — orphaned before birth.

Still, she persevered. She submitted her work without much guidance, relying on the remnants of confidence she had left. And then, the fateful day arrived.

The Open Defence.

The external examiner was in place. The room was set. And in walked her supervisor, regal and composed, ready to preside over the final rite of passage. As per protocol, the supervisor introduced the examiner with grace. Then came her turn — the scholar who had toiled, wept, and rebuilt herself through pain.

The words came — not of praise, but poison.

“This is not my work,” the supervisor said. “I have nothing to do with it.”

A disclaimer.
A disowning.
Right there. In front of the academic community. During her moment of deepest vulnerability.

She stood there, stunned. Praying. Blinking back tears she wouldn’t let fall.

Was this a defence or a battlefield?

Was her thesis a document — or collateral damage?

You think this is rare?

Think again.

There are supervisors who scroll through students’ social media feeds, flagging likes and shares that don’t align with their “camp.” They believe in freedom of expression — as long as it's flattering. One wrong post, one unapproved mentor, and the threats begin: “If you want to finish, keep quiet.”

Yes, in the land of knowledge, authoritarianism often wears a shawl and glasses.

And we wonder why democracy crumbles outside when it’s starved of breath inside our classrooms.