The TOI correspondent from Washington: Universities often like to think of themselves as marketplaces of ideas. At the University of Colorado, Boulder, that marketplace briefly became a battleground over aromas, ending with a $200,000 settlement, two Indian PhD students exiled from campus for life, and a cautionary tale about what happens when cultural sensitivity collides with a communal microwave.The saga began modestly in September 2023, with lunch. Aditya Prakash, 34, a fully funded PhD student in anthropology, attempted to reheat a container of palak paneer in a shared faculty kitchen. According to court filings, a staff member objected, declaring the spinach-and-cottage cheese curry “pungent,” and instructing him to stop using the microwave for such food.Prakash, an anthropologist by training and temperament, declined to swallow the rebuke quietly. While it is not unusual for Indian renters to be denied digs by landlords on culinary grounds (“smell of curry) , he pointed out that shared kitchens are, by definition, shared, and that judgments about smell are culturally conditioned. When staff allegedly responded that even broccoli could be considered too odorous, Prakash offered a line that would later echo through legal briefs and social media alike: “How many groups face racism because they eat broccoli?”What might have ended as an awkward lunchtime exchange instead escalated into a full-course administrative response. According to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in May 2025, the university initiated what Prakash’s lawyers described as a “pattern of retaliation.” He was summoned to meetings and told that his insistence on reheating his food had made staff “feel unsafe,” language the complaint argued was being stretched from concern to cudgel.The heat quickly spread to Prakash’s colleague, Urmi Bhattacharyya, also a doctoral student. After she invited him to speak to her class about ethnocentrism—using the incident as a teaching example—her teaching assistantship was abruptly terminated. Matters worsened when she and several peers later shared Indian food on campus in a show of solidarity, only to be accused, according to the lawsuit, of “inciting a riot.”If the dispute had stopped at disciplinary letters, it might have cooled. Instead, the university declined to award the pair the master’s degrees they had already earned on their way to doctorates. Their attorney, Tyrone Glover, argued the move effectively held their academic records hostage, turning a lunchroom spat into a civil rights issue with six-figure implications.By the fall of 2025, CU Boulder settled. The terms were as striking as the origin story: $200,000 to cover emotional distress and legal fees, formal conferral of the delayed degrees—but a permanent “no reentry” clause barring both students from ever studying or working at the university again.University officials denied wrongdoing, saying established procedures had been followed. Prakash, now back in India with his degree but without any desire to return, struck a resigned note, citing visa uncertainty and sheer exhaustion after two years of fighting.The university has since scrubbed references to “pungent food” from internal guidance. The lesson, however, lingers: when institutions try to regulate the spice level of campus life, they may find themselves paying dearly for the burn.