Tune on to Malaysiakini for the next two parts (I don't want to get sued for copyright infringement, as it is, I think I am already guilty of it. Sorry Prem and Steven) and for the letters and other write-ups on this issue.

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Q&A: Varsities becoming a police state, says top academic
Pauline Puah and Nurul Nazirin
Jun 13, 05 1:43pm


Dr Edmund Terence Gomez, the top Universiti Malaya academic who was ‘forced’ to quit and later reinstated, tells malaysiakini the problems afflicting our universities in this first of a three-part series.

Malaysiakini: What lessons have you learnt from the controversial rejection of your application for secondment?

Gomez: My biggest fear is that the active involvement of politicians in the running of the university will curb academic freedom, and it has come to that.

According to the Universities and University Colleges Act, the vice-chancellor is appointed by the minister of higher education. It is unfortunate that we have a system where the minister, in consultation with the prime minister, decides who should be the vice-chancellor of the university. That means the vice-chancellor himself would probably recognise he is rather indebted to the executive for his appointment.

And that ultimately has repercussions on the university, in that most of his actions may be based on whether it will upset the executive. In that sense, the space for students to articulate their differences (with the administration), the space for lecturers to articulate criticism about policy and mismanagement in the university, even the structure of the education system and the curriculum in the university - all these are jeopardised.

Lecturers can articulate their views to the management but whether the management will take it up is another issue. As they like to tell us - this is a policy decision, we cannot interfere in policy decisions. But our argument is that we are the practitioners, we are the ones teaching our students. We know what is required here. Our voice should be heard and it is for the management to take it up to the executive and explain to them what changes should be made.

But instead it is top-down, rather than down-up. This is for me the most unfortunate thing. When we try to have our voices heard - since we know what is happening on the ground - the management is generally reluctant to take our views to the top for fear of upsetting the executive.

What is the impact of ‘Akujanji’ (loyalty pledge) on lecturers and students?

When the ‘Akujanji’ came into force, there were some concerns that it was a further attempt to stop lecturers from speaking out. The basic premise behind the ‘Akujanji’ is that we are government servants so we must be loyal to the government. That’s actually something rather absurd because the issue here is not loyalty to the government. The issue here is about serving the needs of our country. It’s about educating our young properly - giving them a critical mind. Explaining to them what education is all about - that it is about questioning and asking why problems are the way they are. Teaching them how to analyse.

The ‘Akujanji’ in fact is an impairment to the whole education process. It’s saying - don’t challenge, don’t question. That’s not what universities are all about. So in that sense when the ‘Akujanji’ was first mooted by (then) Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, there were a lot of protests in the university against it. But all lecturers were forced to sign the ‘Akujanji’.

On whether it has curbed lecturers from speaking up, my own feeling is it has not. There is already enough legislation that stops lecturers from speaking up. The ‘Akujanji’ was a further impediment. It’s an unnecessary act by the government. But it reinforces the point that you cannot challenge the authorities in this country.

In your letter to malaysiakini recently, you said you had been unfairly treated by the university authorities.

One of my major involvements in the university has been through UM’s academic union. My reason for joining the union was to give me an avenue to engage and dialogue with the management.

Under the previous vice-chancellor Anuar Zaini (Md Zain), we had many sessions and we were in dialogue. He tended to listen to what we had to say. He may not have agreed with us and we had many arguments about his management and some of his policies. But he did not personalise the issues. We felt that although he might not have acted on our views - as he too tended to conform to government policies - the fact is that he at least understood where we were coming from.

Under the present leadership, we wanted to continue this process of dialogue, but my own view is that the (present) vice-chancellor (Prof Dr Hashim Yaacob) tends to personalise criticism.

In my particular case involving the secondment, when I first approached him about my appointment to the UN (United Nations), the VC was very supportive. He in fact congratulated me and said this is good for the university, and it helps put UM on the international map. He also agreed with me that we could bring more university lecturers to the UN for the projects I am going to start there.

However, subsequently, during a union meeting with the VC – and I believe this is probably where my problems intensified with Prof Hashim – we were very upset with him on one particular issue. The university has a UM mailing system which we use to communicate with each other. We found out that e-mails were being monitored. We were told the reason for this was to check the distribution of pornographic material. But we pointed out to the VC that if a lecturer distributes pornographic material, the lecturer concerned should be called up for disciplinary action. The rest of us should not be penalised.

The e-mail system is an avenue (for lecturers) to talk about problems and issues involving the university and so on and so forth, as well as to inform the management about how we feel about these issues. It’s an important communication link between the staff and the management. That e-mail system is now being monitored to ensure that material which the university feels is not proper is not distributed. We feel that this is improper. This is not a police state. This is a university. We should be allowed to dialogue with each other. I think since we had a heated debate on that matter, this probably upset the VC. This is my interpretation.

There are also other issues that we have been pressing the VC to act on. There is the allegation of impropriety in the promotion exercise in the university. A committee was established to look into this allegation by several lecturers. Union members were part of this committee. We found evidence to support the allegation.

What evidence have you found?

I cannot say because this is a confidential investigation. But I can say we found evidence of irregularities in the exercise. The report was prepared and we submitted it to the VC. We also submitted a copy to the minister of higher education, Dr Shafie (Salleh) last year. We asked the minister as well as the VC to establish a public enquiry, to do a proper independent investigation to ensure all promotion exercises are conducted in an open and transparent manner.

Has there been any action taken?

No action has been taken at all. We have been pressing the VC to act on this matter. The point is we have asked for a public enquiry but they have not established it. Another issue, which is highly contentious, is the examination process. We (the academic union) are concerned that lecturers have been robbed of their autonomy in the marking of exam scripts. This is another core issue that we had raised to the VC - that there is evidence that exam grades awarded by lecturers have been altered in spite of the lecturers’ objections.

How does that work?

I can give you one, out of several, examples. In one department, three lecturers marked one difficult paper. The failure rate was very high. When the department met, they decided to give, across the board, 13 (additional) percentage points to all students. Two of the three lecturers who graded this paper protested this decision. They argued that this was not proper procedure. If there is any dispute in the grading of a paper, the proper procedure is that the examiners remark the paper. If there is still a dispute after the remarking of the paper, an independent examiner is appointed.

This procedure was not followed. Instead at the department meeting, they agreed to take a vote to override the examiners on this point. This is highly improper. We don’t take a vote among department members to decide on examination grades.

After they took the vote, they decided to raise across the board the marks to appreciably increase the pass rate. Subsequently, when the union was informed about this, we took this matter up with the VC. The lecturers concerned had also complained several times to the VC. They did not get a response. They had also informed the then Minister of Education (Musa Mohamad) but nothing has happened with this case.

We have argued with the VC that the raising of marks is not in the students’ interest. If you tamper with the students’ marks, what you are allowing is for students to pass the examination without necessarily having acquired the skills for that course. Then what happens is if they graduate, they come out with a degree but may not necessarily be properly educated. This is a fundamental problem now because we can see the growing unemployment rate among our graduates.

Our students are not being properly and responsibly trained. If we allow examiners’ marks to be overturned to allow students to pass, we are only exacerbating the problem of graduate unemployment. This is a great disservice to not just the students themselves but to Malaysian society.

We argued that this is a serious matter that needs to be checked. So as you can see we have raised a series of issues to the VC which we feel the management needs to act on. But they have not.

And I cannot but reach the conclusion that it is this problem which probably led to his (VC’s) decision to deny me my secondment. He probably was aware that I could not give up the appointment in the UN because this is such an important offer to lead an international project. They forced my hand - that is to resign, which is what happened.

Could it be also due to your extensive writing on money politics and corruption?

Yes, I cannot deny that the management has been rather concerned about my publications. The VC himself had told me that I should be loyal to the government. By that I think he interpreted my publications as being too critical of government policies and political practices such as corruption and money politics. I’ve written extensively on these issues. And I feel that because I am a vocal critique of money politics in Malaysia, the management sees me as a rather controversial figure.

But having said that, I would like to reiterate this point. In spite of my writing, I have been able to dialogue with the management. However, the problem is whether we can get them to act. Whether we can get them to take on the government to rectify the problems that exist in the university.

The other issue is I do believe that the management recognises that I have tried to contribute to the university to the best of my ability through my teaching, as well as my research.

I was asked by the VC to help establish the China Studies Institute at UM. I immediately accepted the offer to help him set up the institute because it gave me an opportunity to show to the VC what we can do if we are given the freedom to start something.

I used this opportunity to do two things. One, to internationalise UM’s research, and two, to try to groom a new breed of students who will become specialists in China studies.

The first thing I did was I visited a few leading universities in America, including Columbia, Johns Hopkins and George Washington. I told them that UM is establishing a China Studies Institute. (I told them) we don’t have the expertise on China so we would like them to train our bureaucrats and academics in China studies and they agreed. In return, I also told the American professors, we would like them to promote Malaysian studies. This was my agreement with the VC. I will use the China Institute not only to promote studies on China, but Malaysian studies. The institute would promote research on ‘Malaysia in China’ and ‘Southeast Asia in China’.

I wanted to use this opportunity not only to help encourage China studies in Malaysia but to build up Malaysian studies in America, the UK and Europe. If you go to America or the UK, you will find that the volume of research on Malaysia is rather limited. The research on China or East Asia is significant. We could tap into their expertise, but at the same time we could help to promote Malaysian studies abroad.

In one particular university, George Washington University, we reached an agreement where two prominent professors of China studies would come to Malaysia to run a two-week programme where they would teach or introduce China studies to academics as well as to senior bureaucrats. That programme was cancelled following my resignation because there was no follow-up. In return, I told the lecturers in George Washington University to allow us to set up there a programme on Malaysian studies and Southeast Asian studies. I was hoping to take this forward. I had a similar discussion with professors in Columbia University.

The second programme which I started in the China Institute was a research project called ‘The World in China, China in the World’. The basic premise behind this research project was we would get researchers who are looking at investment flows into China as well as out of China to come together to pool our data.

I visited a number of universities in China, as well as Europe, and got them to come on board to be part of the project. All these lecturers are specialists in terms of investments in China. The China Institute was to act as a centre coordinating the programme. It was to process and distribute the data and we were to work on numerous projects. Already we had four universities from Europe in this project. We had universities from China which were part of this project. We were planning to bring more universities into this project.

The third project I started with China is working with Tsing Hua and Peking Universities. We were to send our senior bureaucrats to China after our programme with George Washington University, to attend courses in China as well as expose them to the country’s bureaucrats.

The pioneer project I had wanted to introduce is a scholarship programme where the institute would issue scholarships to four or five young, bright PhD students to focus on China studies and to groom them. Or we could have worked with lecturers in the UK or US to collectively groom these students. This would have been an opportunity for Malaysian scholars to work with lecturers in the US as well as to help train local students.

All these projects which I took to the VC, he supported. The point I want to make here is even the VC could recognise the value of these projects. However, my biggest disappointment is that even though he was aware that all these projects had been established, he was also probably aware he was jeopardising these projects by forcing my resignation.

I had hoped that he would call me to discuss these matters because it is not just my resignation that we are talking about here. We are talking about the important projects that were already in the pipeline. This is an important institute which will help to internationalise the university. This institute will groom a new breed of scholars which will help promote China studies in this country. This is an avenue for us to promote Malaysian studies abroad, in Europe as well as in the US, where research on Malaysian studies and Southeast Asian studies is floundering.

All that research, all these projects, have now been jeopardised. That for me is my great regret.

The prime minister has responded to your call to intervene in your case. Are you hopeful he will do more in instituting much needed reforms in our universities?

I had called on the prime minister to deal with this matter because the vice-chancellor is appointed by the higher education minister in consultation with the prime minister. If there are problems in the university, the prime minister ultimately must take responsibility for what is happening in the university.

I am grateful to the prime minister for approving my secondment. He has shown that he is responsive to calls to act justly. This also gives us much hope that he is sincere about acting judiciously in dealing with all the problems that exist in our universities.