Najib to be questioned in Parliament about the summary and arbitrary termination of Chandra as Director of the Centre for Civilisational Dialogues, University of Malaya

(Petaling Jaya, Sunday): The several thousands of University of Malaya students who yesterday demonstrated in protest against the arbitrary termination of Professor Dr. Chandra Muzaffar’s tenure as director of the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue must be  commended for restoring hope that undergraduates in Malaysia are not completely morally dead or intellectually sterile.

In any other university and country, the virtual dismissal of one of the best academic brains in Malaysia in such an arbitrary and summary manner would have become a cause celebre, but in Malaysia, it did not even merit much mass media attention.

For many years, the intellectual atmosphere in the university campus have not only been sterile but quite castrated, thanks to the Universities and University Colleges Act, and this is why I feel encouraged that all intellectual conscience is not dead when several thousands of undergraduates from all faculties could demonstrate at the University of Malaya yesterday against Chandra’s unfair termination of his tenure at the Centre for Civilisational Dialogues.

The students of the Center for Civilizational Dialogue, University Malaya, yesterday issued a statement expressing their  shock at  the removal of their lecturer and supervisor.

The students said that  the reasons for Chandra’s  removal were not only questionable and vague, the decision  to remove him itself was   highly prejudicial and unjust to his students who will be the unseen victims, for the following reasons:
 

• The students will be sitting for an examination next week, of which two papers were taught and are to be examined by Chandra Muzaffar. They fear that now that his services have been allowed to expire,  they would be  left with no option but to rely on an examiner who definitely would not have been part of the curriculum development, delivery or even be aware of the approach and focus that they  were guided in their  classes in preparation for questions set by Prof. Chandra Muzaffar. The Centre is the only one of its kind in this part of the region, and only two people have been part of its  formation and inception, one being Chandra and the other Prof Osman Bakar, who is on medical leave.
• As clients of a Corporatized University, the students  feel cheated that the University has failed to keep up to the promises that it has made through its mission statement to provide quality education and service. Obviously the quality of the program will suffer if the service of a lecturer of a certain course is terminated mid-way through the program. Indeed as this is a new program the studdents are quite wary of any new academic member who does not understand the philosophy and curriculum of the program when taking over.
• Many of the students  in the Masters program enrolled because they  believed that they  could learn from a noted and well-known international intellectual whose life work has been the struggle for justice and cooperation between the various races and civilizations in the world.  It is sad  that the University has failed to recognize this positive influence and input.
• The students are sad that, after all that has been taught to them in the program, the ability to listen, to cooperate, to compromise between  individuals, races and civilization, are now contradicted by the actions of an institution of knowledge. By example it has shown itself uncaring, unwilling to listen nor prepared to come to a compromise for the sake of  the education of its students.
• Finally, the students fear that their  aspirations to play a positive role as bridge builders in a nation that is  divided by communal sentiments and politics, to begin dialogue among the various communities in an effort to create a 'Bangsa' Malaysia will now be stunted because of a lack of vision by the authorities.

Unless the University of Malaya Management revoke its decision and continue the tenure of Chandra as Director for the Centre for Civilisational Dialogues, Najib would be queried in the forthcoming meeting of Parliament on Chandra’s summary and arbitrary dismissal which is the latest threat to academic and intellectual  freedom in the institutions of higher learning in Malaysia, an essential prerequisite if Malaysia is to succeed in catapulting into the information and knowledge society in the new millennium.

 (28/2/99)