The last of Azmi Sharom's columns?

In a way, I shouldn't be surprised to hear that the authorities at UM have barred (or so it seems) Azmi Sharom, of the law faculty, from writing any more columns in the Star. Perhaps I should be surprised that he was allowed to write as much as he did, many of them articles criticizing the state of higher education in our country. The straw that seemed to have broken the camel's back was certain factual errors in his October 2nd column criticizing the university's handling of campus elections.

This was Tok Pa's reply to Lim Kit Siang, as reported by Malaysiakini:

In his ministerial winding-up, Higher Education Minister Mustapha Mohamed told the House that Azmi was called up after UM found that his article contained two “factual errors”.

“The campaign period was not one day as stated in the article, it was six days. The writer also implied that there were irregularities involved at the law faculty’s election (as there was a re-election held at the faculty), but this was not true,” he said.

“As an academician, he should be objective and write the right facts. The honourable Ipoh Timor (Lim) has been influenced by the inaccurate facts in the column,” he added.

I don't know much about the details of the campus elections in UM and in other local universities, but it seems that these inaccurate facts were at best minor details. Indeed, it was surprising that Tok Pa or the university administrators didn't adress what I thought was the larger issue which was the fact that some pro-establishment candidates were put up in a luxury hotel during the period of the campus elections. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

In the same Malaysiakini article, the newly appointed UM VC was asked about this matter:

On Oct 6, the UM vice-chancellor told a press conference that the university believed in academic freedom but such freedom would not directly enhance academic excellence.

Asked to comment on whether the university restricts its academicians from writing freely in newspapers, Rafiah however appeared evasive and said writing in newspapers does not help improve academic excellence as newspaper columns would not be cited by academic journals.

While she is absolutely correct in saying that writing in newspapers doesn't help improve academic excellence (in terms of intellectual contribution in one's field), she fails to understand that academics are often called to play a bigger role, including contributing to the larger public debate as public intellectuals. Azmi Sharom was clearly contributing to public discourse in his capacity as a public intellectual.

She also fails to recognize that a university should be open to criticism from its own faculty members, especially on issues which have to do with its reputation. Instead of clamping down on such debate, the VC should listen to such greviances and address some of the root causes of such greviances, to the extent that is possible.

Many academics in my own university, Duke, expressed their dissatisfaction publicly with the way the university administrators were handling a high profile rape accusation case involving the players in the lacrosse team at Duke. Many of them wrote letters to the local and national press and none of them were 'hauled' up by the university administrators to be reprimanded or warned, even though some of them did not have all the right 'facts'. Indeed, the administrators at Duke were proactive and tried to address the concerns of many of these academics through the setting up of special committees to further investigate the issues of concern.

What if Azmi Sharom had written columns criticizing certain government policies instead of highlighting certain shortcomings in the local universities? Would he have also been hauled up for not playing his part in the 'nation-building' project? (I wonder if any of the administrators have heard of a New York Times columnist by the name of Paul Krugman who also happens to be a dabbler in the field of economics?)

The ironic thing about the muzzling of academics such as Azmi Sharom (as well as others such as Terence Gomez and KS Jomo) is that the reputation, domestically and internationally, of our public universities is further damaged. The presence of such public intellectuals, who were given space to contribute to the public discourse, actually gave the local universities at least an appearance of having some academic freedom and some proof that a healthy academic environment of debate and discussion within our local universities was not entirely a myth. Worse still, if the actions taken by the university administrators eventually lead to Azmi Sharom leaving UM for greener pastures elsewhere, then we would have lost another good academic.

We were giving the new VC at UM the benefit of the doubt, crediting her (and other VCs) with a measured response in regards to the latest THES rankings as well as inviting opposition members to an event officated by Pak Lah (the setting up of the Royal Ungku Aziz Chair for Poverty Studies). This latest move to try to muzzle Azmi Sharom would certainly count as a mark in the negative column for the new UM VC. It shows that she's not ready to meaningful space for open, transparent and purposely discussion and dialogue in the public realm.

On my part, I hope that the Malaysiakini report is not correct in the sense that I hope that Azmi Sharom might have gotten away with a strong reprimand / warning and that he will be allowed to continue writing his columns in The Star. But perhaps this is more wishful thinking on my part?