BENGALURU: Legal scholar Lawrence Liang, one of the winners of Infosys Prize 2017, said there is an unfairness in accusations made on social media. Liang, who won the prize in Social Sciences category, was one of the people named in lawyer Raya Sarkar’s recent Facebook post listing academics who had allegedly sexually harassed women. When asked about the post, Liang told Express, “I’ve so far refrained from commenting on it and would want to retain that for the simple reason that I recognise that there is a global movement and there are various forms. I do believe that there is an unfairness in accusations made on social media. They have a life of their own and they can seriously harm people.”
He said he has not taken any legal steps against Raya Sarkar. “I disagree with the form. Some of the studies in media also recognise that this is a very strange form that has emerged in the contemporary,” he said. Liang is the co-founder of Bengaluru-based Alternative Law Forum and one of the member contributors of Kafila Online, a team blog that condemned the Facebook post. “As a legal scholar I can tell you that law is probably the least effective in dealing with this. Some of my work in the past has suggested that there is very little that law can do with virality. Let the conversation be about the work.
It is unfortunate that this controversy sits alongside my work”. Infosys Science Foundation general manager Bhavna Mehra said, “There are many things said on social media. It is a democratised space and anyone can comment anything, but there is no proof of it. It’s the work we are rewarding.” Liang said the award is not just for him but for a larger intellectual movement on the possibilities of what interdisciplinary studies can be done with law. “That has been recognised and it is very gratifying. Prof Kaushik Basu and Mohandas Pai informed me of the decision to award me and I was absolutely overwhelmed.”