PERGERAKAN Tenaga Akademik Malaysia (Gerak) is deeply concerned with the
recent public comments made by the media and communications adviser to the
prime minister, A. Kadir Jasin.
Kadir apparently was upset with the writings and revelations of a lone,
rather junior, academic from UKM, Abdul Muein Abadi.
Muein, who is currently working on his PhD in Leiden, Holland, incurred
Kadir’s wrath in an article which asserted that the Pakatan Harapan government
had sold off RM20 billion in assets since winning GE14.
The article was posted on Umno-Online, Umno’s official news portal.
It is a rather shaky article that has 40 points, accompanied by links
and little discussion or analysis. It’s the kind of sensationalist,
pseudo-academic piece that throws a few reports together, without context or
explanation.
Based on this flimsy piece, Kadir started hurling accusations of a
conspiracy by the oft-mentioned but seldom analysed “deep state”.
In his diatribe, Kadir lumped together Muein with the UKM
vice-chancellor and the chair of UKM’s board of directors as possible
deep-state conspirators.
And he then asserted that Education Minister Maszlee Malik was being
taken for a ride by these evil-doers.
Yes, this outburst was based on an article with fewer than 1,500 words.
Kadir evidently is no academic. Otherwise, he would have easily
differentiated between a well-discussed academic analysis and really, a first
year undergraduate piece like Muein’s.
But Gerak’s more serious contention is that even if it had been a
thorough, well-researched and analysed paper criticising the PH government, so
what?
Academic freedom and responsibility means seeking truths and verifying
them. And often the truth need not necessarily be our truth and will hurt. But
differences of opinion and dissent are part and parcel of academia, of knowledge
acquisition and generation.
If the work is faulty and clearly biased, it is our task – and indeed
even Kadir’s – to criticise the work, reveal its limitations and failings, and
come up with a counter.
This was what happened earlier this year when the substandard work on
the Statute of Rome, by the four now-disgraced academics from UIA, UiTM and
USIM, was systematically and comprehensively critiqued and dismissed by real
experts.
That these four did not defend their stand at all speaks volumes of
their shame and possible loss of face and credibility.
None of us asked for them to be disciplined or even sacked. No one asked
the Education Ministry and minister to interfere and punish them.
For Gerak, it must be the same with Muein and his article. Criticise his
work if we must, question his value as a scholar perhaps.
But let us not get so paranoid as to believe, without a shred of
evidence, that there is this big conspiracy.
Kadir may be the PM’s media and communications adviser. But as far as
academia is concerned, he must not be our censor.
What Kadir is doing is political interference. What he is implying the
education minister must do also is political interference.
This is not – and must not be – the way of the New Malaysia.
Gerak consistently rejects political interference in academia. Such
interference is one of the major reasons Malaysian academia is in the sad state
it is in.
Academic reform, however, slow, is taking place. But it won’t go very
far if we allow these kinds of actions – by people who should know better – to
continue.
– July 9, 2019.
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