Malaysian universities as preservers of cultures and traditions | New Strai... https://www.nst.com.my/education/2017/04/234049/malaysian-universiti...

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(File pix) The university as an economic engine, harnessing so-called human capital for a so-called high performance culture,
is no different from an F1 pit stop.

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By A Murad Merican (/authors/murad-merican-0) - April 26, 2017 @ 4:08pm That gut feeling
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NOBODY talks about intellectual enquiry anymore. The worth of a university
/WycsjUJmuqIITdr1QJYJ9i_TWnQ
is now mainly weighed in economic terms. The university as an economic

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Malaysian universities as preservers of cultures and traditions | New Strai... https://www.nst.com.my/education/2017/04/234049/malaysian-universiti...

engine, harnessing so-called human capital with vocabularies such as Bm2mjdEPsZk3Dg9ukNgvAVRSVyV

innovation, creativity and technos concocted in every savoury wayfor zN_r7AxjaHent51mRTDcas804jSmr
a socalled high performance culture, is no different from an F1 pit stop. It is ugVgz9_Dg8CD8J0zkAMgISqZ57rn
a race for winning. Producing and publishing tons of papers per yearin guLX4NyYez1YReI_aFjrZGNiJTssw
indexed journals is fashionable. Getting postgraduate students to churn AeRGKi48_1Fax_--
out papers some, I was told, wrote more than 20 per year (with the 8gyjiJnuPSFLZSjINo-
supervisors name tagged to them)together with a bunch of other 6zans7kcPuPj7IZ19crWLCsz1Gf4fY
associates is the culture of the day. And in some universities, it is obligatory kYZ-GY0Ua2Me4fppydwEkJbz4rkK
to have the supervisors name as co-author, failing which funds and N-uqc4PoPE1aISelXb8h40KjbN7osS
permission to present are not granted.
PM Najib's Wesak Day message
In this university rat race, it seems that thinking, reflection and scholarship
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are sacrificed. Universities do not seem to put the right things at the right
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place anymore. Nobody talks about the production of scholarship, except
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perhaps in the occasional colloquia within the confines of the humanities and
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social science-oriented departments in faculties. Patents and
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commercialisation are the queen of university production.
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Nobody talks about universities as preservers of cultures and traditions. YKO7pDuXwRHDkwr_hDbfKY2fJ
Universities talk about tomorrow necessarily so but at the expense of ivSzxKC2UuWbpmX90pOaconFlyb
yesterday. Discourse on the past is subdued, suppressed, perhaps forgotten. jDsd8mlydEmxHV0hPn4tRAfmoTw
The analogy between universities and museums is unheard of on national MhzP61FzG27mHC8fWvOUkGGte
campuses. We fear making universities seem too conservative, or too _Vuomi-yQ4ZtE-
complacent, or too backward-looking a damning phrase from the lexicon ppecheUGf1UxhsM02Ras_mnP1_Rw
of contemporary right-mindedness, though we might, on reflection, have to PRTvWRLg2sxTr7FpUU44gdcaQSy
acknowledge that most of what we reflect on and try to understand is dyUPzQ56YaHGbN5rLLZI55_bA0h
necessarily in the past. byoQ0qqoSJsohLQQ5SS4JJaURfGf

Universities are sustained by the wider world of scholarship and science.

Two Immigration officers, a
The museum is home to all sorts of knowledge advancementmoving
contractor remanded over foreign
beyond what we are conscious of in the country. The museum gives people
workers' hiring scandal
their place in things. Like history, it is to give the past its place in us,
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asahistorian put it.
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Universities should enable us to place ourselves in relation to the world. /-nL-8nZrx7Kv2uqWVi7ln5o3Z-
Challenging the idea that universities must show their contribution to UAsWvstJFaAG7BO7mRYZ8luAze
economic growth, and pleading for the recognition of the inherent worth of lW7xJPneAQIQCvHcXhjesA3GPsx
intellectual inquiry is Cambridge University Intellectual History and English Y4EuBZX6STLrm_xnA_PD7-
Literature Professor Stefan Collini. We do not have to draw from the y-BG47JwpS_7nRA8lZHhZmXzO3V
Cambridge don on the need for universities we have sufficient voices from F5aW6ziqdvCCmU-
the national academic community echoing similar arguments. But these do kUdywbSe_ag-FbaZF-
not get the press they deserve. xuobOZx6A2IMdlnxjrsguxiGztaAtr
L2ErbzWM6niaZGYOpfZEeRbmxQ
In his book, What are Universities for? (2012), Collini presents a spirited,
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compelling argument for rethinking the way we see universities, and why we
need them. He puts a particular case for the humanities, which can seem the
We have no intention of
most difficult subjects to justify but may be among the most valuable. He
repatriating Wanndy's body:
provides a debate on the useful and the useless deriving from the
DPM (https://api.cxense.com
humanities and the larger human sciences itself.
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Universities can be likened to museums and galleries. But museums are not /n98mzB45EFSfFZtVj0iaTFGld8-

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Malaysian universities as preservers of cultures and traditions | New Strai... https://www.nst.com.my/education/2017/04/234049/malaysian-universiti...

fashionable. People and university spokespersons are less likely to offer that NrvX6JeAhgNO5KZzTXtfbZ9qSM6
comparison. But what lies at the heart of the university is closer to the nature o-dj_0ZYg41PRZ_4o2LrncL8_oFFk
of a museum or gallery. We seem to forget the campus. Instead, students gTFZRd_n8cYzm-
and academics are urged to look at the real world out there. Most of what 1PBbGdOu3DgPeiNw0MXiRiR6X63
we reflect on and try to understand is necessarily the past. EnjD2IEzBHreDWR3ctE9HbM2F7E
tg2krPaxelcZD0L9e_8LLcT4bIztkjj
Collini makes a comparison between the research laboratory and the
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museum in respect of their relation to time, where the former is seen as
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oriented towards the future and to discover while the latter is concerned with
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the past and with preservation. The familiar contrast obscures not just the
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ways in which a museum expresses constantly changing relations to human
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understanding and is the home to all kinds of advances in knowledge, but,
more importantly, the ways in which any scientific community is embedded
Footballer Francis Forkey Doe
in, indeed partly constituted by, the practices and observations of its
fined RM6,000 for using cloned
predecessors.
car (https://api.cxense.com/public
Both universities and museums do not exist in a vacuum. They require a /widget/click
very extensive cultural infrastructure, including not only the education /OQxSTOIE7gIqNwsPFNdknDBQic
needed for curators and conservers and researchers, but also the wider 9VzYgqsHnrx7NFyltr2mNZtbkt0Cw
world of scholarship and science which sustains them. And by science, it by8hrggNEmlNVsOPbalYmrNaWT
means the production of knowledge in its philosophical, sociological and az7pX6b3-
historical ramifications. It has been argued that precisely why the question Wh548tEP3b_OAAcGj_oWk4dCUA
What are museums/galleries for? can be helpful in thinking about iG-YwLZHOBvRipUl48V4U8kJ2jy4
universities is because it reminds us that the answers do not depend just on wdTVQJJSpEU808EgasrIoet5dmfd
the interests of the current generation. All conservation, all transmission (of
knowledge) and all enquiry are implicitly governed by their relation to the Rukun Tetangga Co-op will boost
future. B40 group's income: Joseph
Kurup (https://api.cxense.com
Finding ones place in time and space, in the scheme of things, is not only
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confined to the humanities, but to the whole set of enquiries in physics,
/OgIux_60XAe10b4lJ_mz70PccKieS
astronomy, sociology, anthropology, even architecture and history, and
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literature and philosophy. In this sense, universities and museums have
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something in common it has to do with ourselves and our relations to the
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world.
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Universities will continue to be seen by governments as instruments of social X8n7jgqWugBATwOC49NCAdMoh
mobility, manpower planning and economic growth, but we have to return to 1lf5o5zUSvezC_eFl0ymdDUcnLkxzV
the discourse on universities as custodians of cultures and traditions. OgKFDrxK925qUbYj4-
mivaI_nxPlMTLzWv-
This role does not fall on Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) alone. That
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consciousness must be carried by all universities in the nation, bearing in
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mind the multiple nature of their establishment and mission. That function of
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the preservation, cultivation and transmission of cultural traditions is in line
with the resolution of the National Cultural Congress held in Bangi, UKM
Tackling elderly sex crimes
recently. The reason why we need universities has to be drawn from the
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national, the regional, endogenous, indigenous, and decolonised domains.
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A Murad Merican is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research and /0NRPrdiqYwnR9QV-
International Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and the first recipient of the 9B3IhTmDCa9ZWknm89dYYVtCsU
Honorary President Resident Fellowship at the Perdana Leadership HDsiIQN4klhWmLuqAbdC5hV16Q
Foundation. Email him at ahmadmurad@usm.my 1xmWvL_d8ag_-

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