What are we teaching our university students?

WHEN Universiti Teknologi Mara (UitM) students launched a “wear black protest day” recently to ensure that their university would continue not to allow non-bumiputras in, alarm bells should have rung in academic circles about what kind of critical thinking and progressive philosophy we are imparting to our graduates from the so called “hallowed halls” of academia.

After 37 years in academia, even using the word “academia” no longer has any pride, much less value, to me. I have witnessed the slow deterioration of Malaysian universities for 37 years, and this culminates in the deafening silence from any academic on the validity of a protest against a temporary pathway for a few surgeons to complete a course in cardiothoraic surgery.

The protesting students stated that Uitm has been only for bumiputras from its inception as ITM – Institute Teknologi Mara, the university’s first iteration – therefore non-bumiputras are off limits.

Of course, international students can enter its post graduate programmes but rakyat Malaysia cannot send their children there even after their parents forked out billions of ringgit in taxes that pay the academics’ salary and for the infrastructure’s upkeep.

Apparently, as an academic, a Muslim and a Malaysian, it seems I am alone in hearing the alarm bell warning us about the destruction of our varsities’ integrity in producing not only thinking citizens but also those that would make up a global humanity.

This Uitm thing is not the first bell to ring. Just a few years ago, a group of Muslim university graduates known as Gamis, or Gabungan Mahasiswa Islam Malaysia, threatened the Dong Zong (the United Chinese Schools Committees’ Association) with May 13 slogans (referring to the racial riots that occurred on that day in 1969) if the group did not drop its reluctance to agree to the Jawi script being introduced inthe Bahasa Malaysia syllabus.

The police stepped in and advised the Dong Zong to back down and merely called a few of the Gamis members in for a “quiet talk”. I would have hauled the Gamis committee in to be remanded in the lock up for a week just for uttering the dreaded May 13 threat. No other academic joined me in sounding any warning bells.

Wait, that is not even the second warning bell. We had a graduate from Universiti Malaysia Sabah who proudly walked up to accept his diploma before displaying a Sieg Heil, the Nazi salute that has not been seen in half a century after World War II ended with the suspected suicide of Adolf Hitler.

This time, aside from me, the German ambassador to Malaysia also showed utter disgust at this behaviour but other academics went on with business as usual. Now, what was wrong with the Seig Heil salute? Perhaps it done unknowingly? But no, it was accompanied by the student's Facebook post saying he admired Hitler and the Holocaust Hitler ordered that killed millions of Jews – children, women, the elderly, infants – in concentration camps.

Now, where did these students in these three different incidents spanning not even a decade get their narratives of history from or their learning about the sanctity of human life irrespective of race, faith and culture? What kind of academics do our public varsities have that would lead these students to dishonour citizens, humanity, and the critical perspectives of history?

Of course, one can argue that the students may have inherited the toxic narratives of the political parties that always deploy religious and racial rhetoric. And of course, one can argue that these students were too impressed by those ustaz on TikTok and YouTube or at mosques that cultivate freely this hatred of “the other” and the idea of “protecting” the status quo in politics for one particular race. But why would university students supposedly learning to think critically fall for any of this?

The unity government should look at these three incidents and ask the serious question, “What the heck is happening on university campuses and what are the real qualifications of the teachers of history, philosophy, politics and religion, and what are they thinking?” Are these academics also trapped in a conservative-extremist mind set? Do they read enough widely?

I personally would like to interview all these academics of these General Studies subjects as well as those teaching political science. Are these academics imparting their own personal conservative and extremist views? Or are they not discussing conservative and extremist views in national politics from newer perspectives of human dignity and historical versatility as well as dynamic interpretations?

Are our varsities equipping graduates with the skills, attitudes, and perspectives that would help them face the real world even beyond the boundaries of Malaysia, or are our varsities agents of political narratives of conservatism and extremism in race and religion?

Maybe this is another reason increasing numbers of young are refusing to go to university and would rather start earning money through the gig economy. It would perhaps be more useful to them to face the real world and save themselves from the “learning” at a public varsity of regressive ideologies that serve others rather than their own futures.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.