On Academic Freedom and Singapore
My academic freedom has been violated by the National University of Singapore (NUS), part of a persistent failure of the university to protect and uphold academic freedom. I was invited to be a speaker at an event called “Global Research Forum: Towards a Public Asian Studies” to be held at NUS on January 15 to 16, 2024. I was slated to speak on the second day, a panel on “Public Intellectuals, Populism and Power: Perspectives from Southeast Asia”. NUS has since disinvited me from the panel without any official explanation. Based on what I have been told, I understand that it is because I am married to Dr. Thum Ping Tjin (“PJ”), a Singaporean historian and democracy activist whose work and integrity had been previously viciously attacked by the Singaporean government.
On March 29, 2023, a faculty member at NUS asked me by email if I would be interested in joining a panel that his department would be organizing. I accepted, and we had been in touch by email since then to confirm the dates, the draft program, and other logistical issues. NUS administrators also got in touch with me about travel funding and logistics. Last week, on November 2, my NUS colleague called me. He said that his Dean informed him that I had been rejected by the “higher ups” as a speaker on the panel. The Dean insisted that he did not know the reason, but that the Dean told my colleague that he was “free to speculate why” and left it at that. My colleague told me that the only reason he could think of was my association with PJ, but he did not know for certain. I agreed with him, especially since the edict came from someone “higher up” than the Dean himself — someone that the Dean was ostensibly too frightened of to question why a high level official would interfere with an academic event without explanation. We also agreed that this would probably mean that I would not be able to work with NUS or with Singaporean academic institutions ever again. He told me that I could not tell anyone what had happened.
I am unable to stay silent. Neither I, nor he, should bear the terrible burden of keeping NUS’s secrets so that it can maintain its façade of being a “world-class”, “global” university. Having been at NUS as an undergrad and graduate student, I have seen first-hand how the university quietly fosters a culture that is willing to sacrifice academic freedom without a fight. I understand that what happened to me is relatively minor. I did not lose my job nor was I eased out of a promotion; I am physically safe. However, NUS’s rejection is part of a broader pattern of its failure to respect and uphold academic freedom. This is unacceptable and that is why I am speaking out.
One example is the NUS president’s recent communiqué to all university faculty and staff. A Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA, also known as the “Fake News” law) order had been issued by the Singapore government to the Australian National University’s East Asia Forum (EAF) over an commentary on government corruption scandals that NUS professor Chan Ying-Kit wrote. As a result, NUS president Tan Eng Chye then wrote to all faculty and staff last September 20 that “NUS is committed to and upholds academic freedom. Faculty members are free to express and share their views and opinions on any subject matter as long as this is carried out in a professional, responsible and accountable manner, without contravening the laws of Singapore” (emphasis mine). When POFMA was still a proposal, academics had raised serious concerns that it would have “unintended detrimental consequences for scholars and research in Singapore, compromising Singapore’s notable efforts to develop itself into an internationally-recognized hub for excellence in higher education. The legislation may also set negative precedents, with knock-on effects on the global academy”. The NUS president’s September 20 admonishment of the entire university faculty by re-stating the obvious basic rule that “staff must observe and uphold the laws and regulations of Singapore at all times” therefore must be taken in light of how POFMA constrains free speech. To me, the university president’s message was not a reminder to follow the law. It was a warning not to criticize the incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) government.
Another case involves NUS alumni completely replacing their line-up on a 2020 webinar on “Public Discourse, Truth and Trust” on the integrity of media and freedom of public discourse. Singaporeans Cherian George, professor of media studies at the Hong Kong Baptist University, and Donald Low, public policy professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, had just published their book “PAP v PAP” (patently about Singapore’s long incumbent People’s Action Party and Singaporean politics more broadly). But they were replaced at the last minute by a completely different set of speakers. The mystery around the disinvitation of George and Low forces us to again “speculate why”. A book critical of the ruling PAP would probably be reason enough, but George and Low each have a history of critical commentary that eventually pushed them out of the Singaporean academic institutions to which they once belonged.
And of course PJ himself has been penalized for his work as a historian of Singapore as well as a democracy activist. As he told Al-Jazeera in 2018 (at 19:00), when he was working for NUS he had been privately told by a senior university official that he could never work in the formal academic system in Singapore again. This was after PJ had started publishing and giving lectures about his research on how Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, father of the current prime minister, had lied about his use of detentions without trial since the 1960s. When asked for comment, NUS did not deny PJ’s allegations. In 2018, PJ appeared at the Singapore Parliament’s Select Committee hearings on “fake news” in response to the committee’s invitation for members of the public to submit their views. Minister of Law K Shanmugam then proceeded to interrogate PJ for six hours over his research published while at NUS, in what fellow scholars decried as “a ‘show trial’ designed to intimidate, attack and discredit a prominent critic of the historical narratives used by Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party”. The incident sparked an outcry and around 300 members of the international academic community signed an open letter to the committee, expressing deep concern at PJ’s treatment and the “wider implications for freedom of expression and academic freedom in Singapore”. The episode was seen as a grave threat to academic freedom from Singapore’s parliament (see also here). Notably, NUS chose to stay entirely silent over this incident, despite the fact that it was the publisher of PJ’s work. Weeks after the Singapore 2020 General Elections, police questioned PJ for over four hours at a police station and then raided our home in Singapore for his computer and mobile phone, in an investigation over supposed unauthorized internet election advertising during the election — satirical posts in particular which would be treated as fair political commentary in any free society.
I stand in solidarity with Singapore’s academics, and scholars of Singapore. I am responding to NUS’s rejection with an encouragement for NUS faculty and staff to push back when you know your freedom to decide on research, publication, and public engagement is being curtailed. Incidents may seem small on their own but they reproduce the structures of power of an illiberal regime. Change will not happen if these infringements on academic freedom are belittled or ignored. Be intellectually honest as you were trained to be. Do not coerce others and participate in political repression.
Dr. Sol Iglesias studies political violence, democracy, and human rights in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. She is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and is a core member of the Network in Defense of Historical Truth and Academic Freedom. All opinions expressed are her own.
Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
November 11, 2023
