The public discourse on higher education in Sri Lanka cleaves along the false dichotomy of public versus private universities, which masks the many subtle ways and forms in which privatisation of higher education manifests. This misunderstanding has allowed policy makers to introduce or push through numerous reforms to state higher education that facilitate full privatisation in the long term, under different guises, without…

The film Rani (2025, Lyca Productions) by Asoka Handagama based on the character of Manorani Saravanamuttu, a medical doctor and a social activist, was released recently with a major marketing effort. Saravanamuttu (1930-2001) was a key activist within the Mother’s Front movement (1990-94), consisting of mainly Sinhala mothers demanding justice for the forcible disappearance…

Richard de Zoysa was abducted from his home on the night of 18 February 1990, brutally killed, and body discarded. Later it was established that the crime was committed by state-sponsored paramilitaries, though no perpetrators were sentenced by the law (Gunasekara 1998: 529; Wijesinha 1995: 41). Just as it caused an international uproar, de Zoysa’s death was also a matter of intense debate in parliament. Posthumously, the poet’s legacy powered media freedom discourses…