33] We took the road not taken

ILLUMINATIONS
We took “the road not taken”
By Azly Rahman in collaboration with Mutiara Mohamad


Dear friends of intellectual freedom,

The following story may be of interest to you. It concerns the story of my family, victimized by Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Kedah, confirming the emergence and crystallization of a new form of totalitarianism under the administration of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in general, and under the regime of the present Ministry of Higher Education in particular.

In early December, 2004 (before I started writing for Malaysiakini), my wife Dr. Mutiara Mohamad (who is also a graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York) and I were fired by Universiti Utara Malaysia after being denied of our request for an extension of our non-paid leave (till September, 2006) upon the successful completion of our studies.

We were also fired for refusing to sign the Surat Akujanji (Pledge of Loyalty); a letter guaranteeing blind obedience to be signed by all members of The Malaysian Civil Service.

Fired by the previous Vice Chancellor

We were fired while the previous Vice Chancellor, Dr. Ahmad Fawzi Basri (now deceased) was in office.

It has been more than eight months since the written declaration of our dismissal and our letter of appeal for UUM to reconsider to reinstate us. We sent the letter of appeal within the stipulated time given, but we have not heard anything yet from the institution.

We feel that we have given UUM ample time to respond. We now feel that we must share with you this story of victimization.

We are probably the first two Malaysian academicians fired for refusing to sign the Surat Akujanji (after UUM’s repeated attempts to force us to sign it). Initially, we were not even given any explanation of what this exercise was about, which in itself is a violation of procedure.

In addition, we were asked to sign this document in mid-career; which we believe is a violation of our rights.

We will still refuse to sign it until satisfactory revisions to it are made. But the irony is, not signing the Surat Akujanji was enough cause for UUM to terminate our employment.

Our demands are simple and clear.

We will only report to work when the following matters are attended to:

The current Surat Akujanji is discarded, or a revised version of it is presented. All academicians in UUM must first be given a revised version that will ensure their intellectual well-being be attended to and freedom (with responsibility) be granted. Next, we need to see all Malaysian public universities do the same for their academicians.

An Academic Freedom Committee is formed in UUM first, and next, in all public universities, giving freedom for university instructors to teach, do research, report research findings, and be involved in social and political organizations – without fear or favour. This is a very important demand. The new Vice Chancellor of UUM must initiate this reform effort, to signify an important break from the ideology of the old regime.

Ratified statements of academic freedom are produced first by UUM, and next, collaboratively with other Malaysian public universities on the nature of academic freedom that must be honoured by the signatories. Every world-class university in the United States has one. UUM, a self-proclaimed “world-class” university, must have one too.

Specifically two clauses we find disagreeable are:

Clause (viii) of the Surat Akujanji states (in translation) that an officer “… shall not bring or attempt to bring any form of outside influence or pressure to support or advance [his/her] claim or that of other public officers relating to the public services …” and

Clause (ix) from the letter states (in translation) that an officer “… shall not be insubordinate or conduct (himself/herself) in such manner as is likely be construed as being insubordinate.”

These two clauses must be taken out of the letter.

Three simple questions remain unanswered

In one of our correspondences with UUM we asked the administration to answer the following questions in regard to the pledge of loyalty:

1. What might constitute something that will be interpreted as “ingkar perintah” from the point of view of practice? What kind of views or points of view can an academic hold that might be interpreted as “defiance” and therefore subject to disciplinary action?

2. What bodies of knowledge can be presented to students and what cannot? Who decides what can be presented and what cannot and how is this monitored? What is the nature of objectivity that can be presented to the students or the public that can be interpreted as a violation of the contents of the Akujanji?

3. Please explain clearly clause (viii) which states in Bahasa Malaysia “… tidak akan membawa sebarang bentuk pengaruh atau tekanan luar untuk menyokong atau memajukan tuntutan saya atau pegawai lain berhubung dengan atau terhadap Universiti Utara Malaysia. …”

We did not get satisfactory answers. In fact, the Registrar awarded us a letter of termination of employment as a consequence of us asking such questions and for refusing to sign the Surat Akujanji.

UUM did not set up a tribunal before terminating the employment of two of its employees who were confirmed in their service/’telah di sahkan dalam jawatan’.

Our 19-page letter to our leaders

In January 2005, we sent a 19-page letter (stating our reasons for requesting for an extension of our non-paid leave and our refusal to sign the Surat Akujanji) to the following ten individuals asking them to help intervene:

DYMM Yang Di Pertuan Agong XII Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin
Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Perdana Menteri Malaysia
Dato’ Dr. Haji Shafie Hj. Mohd Salleh, Menteri Pendidikan Tinggi
Dato’ Azmi Khalid, Menteri Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri
Dato’ Hishamuddin Tun Hussein, Menteri Pelajaran Malaysia
Dato’ Wira Dr. Fong Chan Onn, Menteri Sumber Manusia
Dato’ Azalina Othman, Menteri Belia dan Sukan
Dato’ Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, Menteri Pembangugan Wanita, Keluarga, dan Masyarakat
Dato’ Radzi Tan Seri Sheikh Ahmed, Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri
Dato’ Shahril Haji Abdul Samad, UMNO Bahagian Johor Bahru

Only Datuk Azmi Khalid sent us a copy of his brief memo to The Minister of Higher Education. The rest did not even acknowledge receipt of our letter. We have concluded that our elected representatives are not interested in attending to our request.

Our telephone call to the Registrar of UUM several months ago revealed that The Minister of Higher Education is still trying to find the right time to attend to this issue.

Where is the Minister of Higher Education?

The Minister of Higher Education needs to explain why he did not bother to attend to our letter of appeal. We do not think he is interested at all in attending to this simple yet important matter. He is an incapable minister, from our analysis thusfar. He should not be taking charge of our public universities.

Our allegiance as academicians is to the pursuit of truth and justice and to freedom of inquiry; not to any political ideology. We believe that is what we are trained to do well. It shall remain this way and we want to see young lecturers embrace this spirit, so that this spirit will permeate into the consciousness of our children and transform them into critical, creative, and altruistic thinkers.

We have however, been made the sacrificial lambs. We no longer have jobs in Malaysia, our hard-earned benefits from years of dedication and toil are all gone – all decided by the few who owns the means of exercising abusive power over others. The abusive acts of these few, hiding behind specialized committees, are sanctioned by a government/university governance that crafts totalitarianism through the silencing of academicians and suppressing of progressive voices of change.

We hold these individuals in the specialized committee accountable for their decision in terminating our employment. They must individually provide justifications to the decision they made that is now affecting our livelihood; a decision that denied us potential years of contribution to our respective fields of expertise. The worth of an institution is measured by the nature of human beings governing it.

Though life for us and our family in the United States has been extremely challenging, we are still surviving. We will persevere until our demands for justice and for the betterment of the lot of our fellow Malaysian academicians are met. We had intended to serve Universiti Utara Malaysia and make a difference in the quality of thinking of its students.

What then must we do?

We will continue to raise consciousness on this issue so that we may install university leaders who will make better sense and prioritize intellectualism. The first one accountable for maintaining this climate of fear is The Minister of Higher Education. The next one is the Prime Minister of Malaysia. The third party is the academicians themselves for refusing, en mass, to speak up.

Most Malaysian academics have allowed themselves to be silenced by the higher authorities – the higher the position these leaders in authority rise onto, the better system of silencing is used. Unfortunately, the academicians either secretly admit that they too are against signing the Surat Akujanji, but are given no opportunities to reject it or are convinced that their individual rights are not at all being violated. To the latter, there is nothing wrong in signing their fundamental rights away and allowing themselves to be treated less intelligently through “official signing ceremonies of the Akujanji”. To us, that is allowing their hard-earned intelligence to be run over by those who are intoxicated with power and whose allegiance is to enrich themselves, their cronies, and their dynasties.

How much respect must we have for those who call themselves leaders when they are merely interested in herding the academicians like cattle in the fertile grounds of propaganda mistaken as knowledge? Must we continue to give them our respect? This is root of the problem of our public universities.

Ironically, some of these leaders are products of universities abroad; of institutions of learning that have taught them to speak up against social injustices, cherish and defend intellectual freedom, and dismantle systems of hegemony and totalitarianism at all levels of cultural spheres and habituses.

Had more academicians been vocal enough to fight against all forms of totalitarianism, we would not have arrived at this historical juncture. This is the classic meaning of “hegemony”, as the Italian social thinker Antonio Gramsci would say; this notion of mind control is applicable to the analysis of our educational system. We must help each other dismantle and rebuild this system that is now rotting to the core.

We will continue with this struggle until Universiti Utara Malaysia honors our requests. The dialogical process may begin by UUM answering the three questions (mentioned in bold above) concerning the Surat Akujanji. Specifically, the committee that fired us must answer those questions.

Dear Friends of Academic Freedom,

To borrow the words of the great poet Robert Frost, let us all take “the road not taken”. If more of us traverse it, we will make a lot of difference to the intellectual climate of our local universities.

Let us, once and for all reject this rule of unreason and bring back the true meaning of a university. The youth we are educating will thank us for this.


Yours sincerely

Dr. Azly Rahman at aar26@columbia.edu
Dr. Mutiara Mohamad at mutiara.mohamad@gmail.com