Sachs came, Sachs spoke, Sachs left

Sorry for the long delay since the last post. Term just started for my last week and I was getting back into the swing of things back in school. For regular readers of this blog, you would know that I have been keeping track of Jeffrey Sachs appointment as the first chair of the Royal Ungku Aziz Chair of Poverty Studies at the UM. This was first announced in November, 2006 and you can read my posts about this issue here and here. He finally came to Malaysia in the middle of August, a couple of weeks back. I've been critical of UM's decision to award this chair to Professor Sachs namely because I don't think it is cost effective and I don't really think that Prof Sachs can do justice in terms of academic contribution to his post. Instead of criticizing MOHE and UM again, I think I'll take a swipe at Prof Sachs this time.

Ever since his appointment was announced, I've been keeping track periodically for news feeds regarding Prof Sachs as well as trying to see if there were any changes to his bio, primarily to see if the press here in the US or other Western countries would pick up on his appointment as well as to see if he would indicate on his bio in Columbia's Earth Institute website, where he's the director, that he had taken up this post in Malaysia.

Like I've said before, it's not common for a professor to hold more than 1 chair in more than one university at a single point in time, primarily because this requires a professor to share his or her time between more than one university. Most universities prefer not to have this kind of arrangement since they want to have 'exclusive claim', if you will to a professor's time and name. Most professors also do not want to have more than one appointment since this means that they have to do work (teaching, admin duties, faculty meetings etc...) for more than one university which leaves them with less time to do their real research. Even academic superstars such as Paul Krugman, teach or are associated with one university at a single point in time. (Krugman recently moved from MIT to Princeton)

There are some professors who can negotiate for special arrangements with their universities but many of them do so for personal reasons. For example, I have a professor here at Duke who spends one semester at England and one semester in at Duke because he's English and his family is back home in England and his research agenda requires him to spend part of in Europe. But I also imagine that part of this arrangement also requires him to be paid less by both institutions, probably splitting his salary 50/50 or thereabouts.

So here's my first beef with Prof Sachs. I think that UM is paying him tons of money to take up this chair but gets little in return. In one of my previous post, I estimated that it probably costs the UM / MOHE somewhere in the range of RM2 to 3 million annually to recruit Prof Sachs to his post. And this appointment is for 2 years. But he is not required to do any teaching or any advising, as far as I know. I'm not sure how much research he can do given that he probably spends less than two weeks in a year in Malaysia! If he was appointed in November last year and he came to Malaysia for one to one and a half weeks in August, this is pretty good money for 2 weeks worth of 'work'. (more like rehashed lectures and platitudes) If he knows that he cannot dedicate a sufficient amount of time and effort towards some sort of academic contribution as the Chair of Poverty Studies at UM, why take it in the first place? It surely can't be only because of money since by all accounts, Prof Sachs is already a wealthy man.

The job description of the Chair and the Centre of Poverty Studies seems like quite a handful. It can be found at this link.

The objectives of the Chair and the Centre are to:

- Serve as a focal point for academic work, research, consultancy and technical assistance in the fields of poverty and development for the academic community, the public, policy makers and the international community;
- Develop new approaches and methodologies in the study of poverty;
- Improve the understanding of life in the rural areas and amongst poverty groups;
- Help increase accessibility to information pertaining to rural communities and poverty groups;
- Disseminate information through the creation of databases, publications, seminars,
conferences, workshops, the internet and the media;
- Contribute towards capacity building in the rural areas especially amongst the poor;
- Encourage the incorporation of local and indigenous knowledge in the development process.

This doesn't seem like something which a Chair can accomplish by spending 2 months in the country, not to mention 2 weeks.

Of course, it could be that Prof Sachs has taken a salary cut from Columbia because of his appointment at the UM. It could be that Prof Sachs is not costing UM RM2 to 3 million ringgit a year (or even half of that). It could be that his appointment beings only in 2007 and not in 2006 as originally announced and so he's only beginning to ramp up his participation and responsibilities as the Chair of Poverty Studies at the UM. I hope that this is the case.

But as far as I know, Prof Sachs is back in the US and will only return to Malaysia sometime in January next year to look at the poverty rate among orang aslis or to do some work regarding poverty in Kelantan, I'm not sure which.

My second beef with Prof Sachs is that if he's been appointed to this Chair, why hasn't he updated his CV at Columbia to indicate this appointment? He obviously updates this now and then since there are some details there in regards to some of this activities in 2007.

As important, why hasn't he made any announcement here in the US with regards to this appointment? It was made big news in Malaysia but the US press was ignorant of this appointment. If UM was hoping that this appointment would give more name recognition to UM here in the US or in other developed nations, I think they have to be somewhat disappointed at the lack of publicity in the media outside Malaysia. I've been keeping track of news feeds from google news over the past year periodically checking on new on Jeffrey Sachs but have found no mention of this appointment in any news feeds outside Malaysian papers.

(Just for fun, why don't our readers google these to see what kind of hits they find: Jeffrey Sachs Chair Poverty Studies, Jeffrey Sachs Universiti Malaya)

Of course, it could be overreaction on my part since Prof Sachs might be just waiting for his appointment details to be confirmed before putting up these details on his website.

But of course, there could be other reasons as to why Prof Sachs might not want to make to big of a deal in regards to this appointment within the US and also within Columbia.

There will certainly be some criticism of his association with the UM as well as with the Malaysian government. Columbia students and faculty, more so than students and faculty in other US universities, are more familiar with the internal politics in Malaysia and are likely to be critical of the lack of democracy within Malaysia. Columbia is a university known to be associated with political dissidents. Many of the student activists from Tian An Men landed up in Columbia. Anwar Ibrahim has been a frequent visitor to Columbia before his arrest and after his release. His last visit to Columbia was probably in January 2006. The UM is also the place which terminated the contract of Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, probably one of Malaysia's best known academics (together with Prof Jomo).

This is pure speculation on my part but Prof Sachs is probably smart enough to know that his appointment to the UM would draw some some attention within Columbia University from faculty as well as students which explains why he's been relatively quiet about this appointment here in the US.

My last beef with Prof Sachs is related to this point. He's smart enough to know that his appointment it not purely an 'academic' one. He's smart enough to know that he's at such a high level of prominence that he won't be able to spend much time doing the 'real' research and administrative duties which a Chair must assume. Hence, the 'deal' must have been something like this - we give you a generous financial package, you don't need to do much real research, just come to Malaysia and tell us good things about ourselves.

While it is true that Malaysia has done a lot to reduce poverty and probably has one of the best poverty reduction rates among developed countries (better than most African and Asian countries but not as good as Korea, Singapore or Taiwan all of which were as poor as some African countries 50 years ago but are now all richer than Malaysia), Prof Sachs seems to have ignored the other problems in Malaysia such as government corruption, urban poverty, poverty among the orang Aslis and in east Malaysia (which is maybe why he wants to do some work in this area), the rising level of income inequality, distortions within the Malaysian economy as a result of government policies and so forth.

(For a list of newspaper reports covering his speeches, see here, here and here)

Does Prof Sachs feel comfortable in his role as an unofficial spokesperson for the Malaysian government and the Malaysian government's policies? This seems to be stepping out of the bounds of what a respected academic should do.

I'm sure that this is not the last I'll be blogging about this issue. I stand to be corrected on many of these points when and where more details are known (such as Prof Sachs arrangement with Columbia, the terms and conditions of his UM appointment, the amount of time and the kind of research he'll be doing in Malaysia etc...) But as things stand, I have to say that I'm quite disappointed with Prof Sachs for taking up this appointment as Chair of Poverty Studies at the UM and the manner in which he has not made this appointment known within Columbia and the US academic community.