SMU Publication: The Straits Times Date: 22 October 2005 Headline: Is it hard to swallow?

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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: MIKE M DIZON & STE

A British univers@@s dedsion this week not to set up a branch campus here has cast the spotlight on academic m o m . Does it exist here? How free are dons to say, write and teach what they choose? Lydia Lim. Sandra h e and Ho Ai U report

FEARS that academics here are "cabined crfbbed confined" to auote Shakemeare's Macba,th. iave lbng dogged ~iagapom's ambitions to became an A t i o n hub.

In a 2801 intervlew with The Straits Timas, two o h from the Economic Developmant Board (EDB) sald as mueh.

Both were at the forefront of ths elrrborate uwtfng rituals to entice foreign unfvdtian to set rrp here.

Bverywhere, the bsue forei .elm a d l e d them mpeate'g over was: freedom of Mr Tm Qek Ming=?&-

rector of the board's services d e d - o ment &vision, said that hevita- b b the Chrirtopher Ungls case nauldhcrapup.

at tbc Br?!P.nbricant6aching No d Unfvedty of Singe- re (NUS), fled the cormtry in PW aftor he was char@ with con-

te t of court we r an d c l e he m?e in the 1nterntttic)d Herald Tribune.

But ruch v~rriec reemed as

dm. I& Tm'r swamor at EDB, Mr

Kenneth Tan, has been courtfne for- eign universities for the last four yearo. In that tlme, W m of ex- p-on bac never been the mein concern, he tell6 W t .

"Tbt bi@ issue now ir the direc-

tion universities should take, in- eluding whether they should ex- pand overseas as a way to maintain &eir relevance to the global eeano- my," he says.

But this week, the quostion of whether academies here ean speak their nriads reared its head again. The controvemy this time centred on Britaia's Warwiek Univemity.

It decided against settiq up a branch campus here after its 48- member senate, made up of faculty and a few mdents, voted agolnst the m e . W o w llwr the lack of aeademic Q e & h helped tipped the d m m t Slngapme.

Warwick euu~omics professor Andrew h d d t& hi8 t frpm Ehglenci: "Our academics P eel there is no true freedom of opeeeh in Sib gapore. The author S a l m Rwh-

ke at W d & $ !%=8'!%bt that would have been allowed in Giagapore." Mr Rushdie's book, The Satanic

Verses, is banned limn fot religious reastms.

Before deciding, Wawiek took pains to h d out more about &ga- ore. In d it N a W

e,v,,F Smg.gcpc law profee- sor Thio Li-Ann to write a paper on the constraints on freedom of ex- pression here, and how this might thwart teaching and research activi- tics.

The report is wnfideatial. As part of its negotiations with

EDB, W d e k also so

dents. p'8" exemptions for its s h an stu

In one letter to EDB, it askad that its students in Singapere be er- emptad from strict laws on heedom sf assmbb, speech and the press, along with a re usst to remove bans on h o m o r A t y and main &-

us racticm on cam , tha Fi- U %m npmtxt btur- day.

Warwick also "mu ht guarqn- that staff end s t u ~ t s w0,Ild

Outdeted views? mQabrns ef All&

2 ! Y a E 2 3 a 4 Hew h u t h Wales (UNS ), the only full-flsdgsd toreign university hsre,

woad@ if these fears are exaggerat- ed.

UNSW deputy vice-chancellor John Ingleson says: "It often sur- prises me how peo le have this pic- ture of singapore &, 20 - yo; not the S iqapre now.

"We have seen the boundaries apenine u in Singapare andaye be- lieve it & open up -era

To what extent are fears of re- straints on academics ed rath- er th.. rn$X&ucie do donehereenJoy?Iftheywanttoaiti-

@des and praeti~kil, to do so?

hi@ tried to canvass views from both 1-1 and foreign aca- demics hem.

Of the 17 academics ap- proe&ed, $x declined to comment, I@& an indication that some do feel ~Ogtrtlined in what they can say to the p m .

Another fivs did not return calls. But six sf those eontaeted were forth- with their views.

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9827-7514. For SMS nmsgedfullname.

Among them wa New Zealan- der Natasha Hamilton-Hart, who does research on South-east Asia.

In har five years at i t s , there have been times when she asked herself if there would be rmglmsaat consequences were she to ut in writing some of her thougtts on Singapore officials and personali- ties.

"In the end, I've always gone ahead and written it anyway and, so far, there have been no negative re- percussions," she says.

She pubbhed in 2OOO a pa r entitled "The Singapore State g- visited". It examined the reasons for the lack of cormption here and asked how thls was so despite the man links between the litieal and &asmess elite - i n d u g doc- umemtiq the Lee M y ' s mk, an area some would consider a no-go m e .

She acknowledges that were she teaching elsewhere, questions over what she could or could not write probably would not even arise.

"People here will tell you, you shuldn t write that, that's danger- ous, so the atmosphere is different bemuse there are past cases they can point to.

"But haviug said that, academic freedom is also coming under as- sault in the US. It is not a perfect model,"' she says.

COWmUEO OW $@

Publication: The Straits Times Date: 22 October 2005 Headline: Is it hard to swallow? SMU Academic freedom: Hard to swallow? CONTINUED FROM S8 turn, women the climate of scholar-

ly reticence, if not fear? For American lecturer Benjamin

Betenber, who teaches media y- cholo at the ~ a n ~ a n g ~eehno&- iu l Eversi ty, the crucial differ- ence lies in where the academic chooses to say what he has to say.

When he first arrived here seven years ago, he was given this pieee of advice by a senior member of his faeulty.

"He told me you can pretty much study and publish what ou waat in the aeademic rars, %ut once ou go to the pop d ar press, it wool~seem like you are seen to be trying to make political hay," he says.

Mr Lee went on to say: "There is nothin6 to prevent him from going into this arena if he is a citizen and so entitled. But he enters the field not as a university teacher but as a eitizen and must be ready for the hurly-burly which other citizens entering this arena indulge in."

Recent clashes between state and academics would su est that these rules of the game .sf!! ap ly.

And some l i e sociologist L%us have no problems with

g in public on those terms. er he critidsed housing policy at

a public forum last year, the Hous- ing Board issued a stro rebuttal.

He has shru ad off%. incident and tells indg ''If I make some comment or write an egga and it gets in the press, I expect t g e Gov- ernment to respond to me. It doesn't bother me."

The six academics interviewed also sa they face no restrictions in what t l ey teach.

NUS olitical scientist Suzaina Kadir, a !in aporsan, says that she and her students have been free to examine policies critically, even in potentially-sensitive areas such as ethic management.

"My task is to get students to think very carefully about the im- plieations of these policies and when you do that you may come out in suppart or hnic critically of them. My students and I have been free to say what we want," she

"Countries have their own rules of engagement.

Western societies Bave theirs, we have our own.

We need to see things in context. Western democmcies evolved over hundreds of years. Singapore has bsan mdependent for 40 years.

In another 50 years from ROW, I wouldn't know how Singapore will compare with Western demaeracies.

There are no absolutes as to what canstitutes academic freedom because it i s in the context of a society.

As far as NUS is concerned, we have a senate,

mattma of academic &culm are brought to the senate, which b not bytheGove~~m~at. p* sfem profeam elected by thew peers." PR# SHIH CHOON PONa,

P"- tdthebtlowl n*dgingapw#

"6w contact with singap<""- eans has helped us gain a more sophisticated, nuanced under- s tand i i of the do-political environlnalt of Sinppore.

I have frieada w h ~ are aca- demics in NUS, NTU and SMU and they can k just ws cynical and eritid of the Sin- gapore CBvemment, but I don't see them lookfng ever their shoulder, wo$d that someone is taking it dl down.

But af course we have to abide by the laws of S i a - pore, just as Siogaporeai~ who m e t o A ~ o a b o l - i a y or to study have to aM& by eur laws." PROF JOHN INGLESON, dam vice-chancellorof Austr~Ik's

~ M e h w i l "-T"lUYlhW* ~ n r e ~ n p w ~ i m 2007

says. Still, it would seem that a fair

number of academics prefer to steer clear of doh rwearch on Sin- - gapore.

One. view is that this is due to "It often surprises me their concerns wer constraints they would face in crurylns out critical studies of the Singapore system.

Insight did a check of the work- ing papers produced by NUS' polit- ical m n c e , midogy srnd econom- ics de artments to see how many were f w e d on Singapore.

The results: seven pa ers on Sin- ga rermtof~to~ofAforpoliti- &em shoe 1991, and 25 out of 73 for sociology.

As for the economics depart- ment, it has published 57 working

P apers since 2091, of which only ive were on Singapore.

But NUS president Shih Choon Fang does not think the lack of in- terest in research on Singapore is due to concerns abdut a lack of aca- demic freedom.

He tells Insight tbat the bias to- wards research on other countries is because top academic journals based the West are leas interest- ed in Asian issues,

"The daminant ideas or opinion makers are mostly found in West- em countries. To get published, what do academics do? They talk about things of interest to the West," he says.

He bo es: to conect this imbd- ma b Lduq ways to r e c o w sehola$y work done on Sooth-east Asia.

how people have this picture of Singapore 15.20 years ago; not the Singapore now. We have seen the boundaries opening up in Singapore and we believe it will open up further."

In conclusion SO IS there academic freedom in S a p e ? %e answer seems to de end on

how one understands the pfkse. To university chiefs and some

academics here, the answer is an un ualified yes. The way the see it, '& ere are no restrictions p r aced on what academics can research or teach within the scholarly realm. So what constraints on freedom are

a-itics But T a h u t ? not a scholars we content te influenee o inion or aha e think- ing solely wi&n this d f c i r d e

Those who venture into speak- ing and writing on Sin a ore's so- dal, economic and po&ti!al U ~ F ) in public, and that includes the mainstream media can expect to be treated differedy. When and how, though, they are

treated differently are assessments made at the disaetion of the politi- cal leadership, making navi ating between the realm <rf aca a emic freedom and citizen engagement a risky exercise.

This is especially so for foreign- ers who have never lived here and worry that they might not be able to read the warning signals as well as Singaporeans can.

The bottom line is that amdem- ics, whether l o 4 or foreign, are ex- empt neither from the laws of the land nor from the rules of engage- ment, as they currently stand.

Will this change? Only when Singapore society as a whole be- conies more open and receptive to diverse points of view. Academic freedom, in other words, flows from and feedseon other freedoms in other spheres of life here.

HOTArvOartY "We recruit a a a from all ever the d d whu don't seem to see an issue with aca- demic freedom here.

Singapore even has inter- national universities like In-

UNSW DEPUTY VKECMNCECLOR JOHN INGLESON

The hrase refers to try to & e advantage o P"P" a ir tuation.

The advice by the senior aca- demic was probably grounded in past experience and on that score,

erhaps the most h$h-profile clash getween an academc and the Gov- ernment took place in 1960.

That year, English rofessor D. I. Enright was reb&d by a minister for comments he made during a ublic lecture, which were poream! as critical of Malay cul- ture.

Shortly after the incident, then prime ministq Lee Kuan Yew set out in a speech to the Uaiversity of Malaya's student's union the Gov- ernment'a position on academics who chose to comment on Singa- pore politics.

An academic's freedom of inqui- ry and research should not be chal- lenged by either governmental or ugiversity authorities, he said,

But this privilege did not extend to the politieal arena, where the ae- adelnic "is not the competent dish- terested explorer of human howl- edge".

sead and the Universi of 1; Chicago. W c a ,as r as we are coacemetthis ir not a worry.

If you look at it only from the outside. vou hear d l kids of stories ad maybe you t W there are conottraints. But when you are operatin8 hem, it's a very different eto- ry."

"Aeadmic W o r n hi^ been a non-issue, dthough with all the press coverage on the Warwick issue, we expect that

t arise when we go re-

its what they can teach, re- sew& m write on.

We expect them to use their common sense. There is a difference betwem wrieus acsdemfc inq* md just stat- ing r pensod opSrdon." PROF WARP HUNTER,

Ri- n t d t h r S w a m m a t UnimWy

Freedom yes, but ... SO IF academies here are indeed free to say and write what they think, then where exactly does the problem lie?

What accounts for the times - few and far between though they m y be - when the Cbvemment has stepped in to censure or rebut points made by academics &at, in