Cherian George used to be an academIC at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The former journalist is a political liberal and a prominent critic of the Singapore government, and he has been publicly rebuked by the state in response.
In 2014, Dr. George joined Hong Kong Baptist University, after what he describes as a “forced exit” from NTU, and having twice been denied tenure. Now the case — which was big news in Singapore and Hong Kong — is back in the headlines and is being widely discussed on social media after comments made about his exit by Bertil Andersson, NTU’s president, in a recent interview with Times Higher Education.
Singapore’s universities are rising powers in the world of higher education thanks to massive government investment in research. Links between its universities and leading Western institutions are growing: Imperial College London and NTU recently committed to opening a medical school on the island in a joint venture.
But the case of Dr. George raises a big question about Singapore. Does the state limit academic freedom by intervening in the nation’s universities to suppress its critics? In 2005, Dr. George became involved in a public dispute with the Singapore government. The nation, which achieved independence in 1965, has been ruled by the People’s Action Party (PAP) since 1959.
“Controls are so seamlessly integrated into the system and coercion is so well calibrated that the average Singaporean can go through much of life without bumping into the hard edges of PAP authoritarianism,” he wrote in The Straits Times, Singapore’s highest-circulation newspaper, in October 2005.
Dr. George, who took his undergraduate degree in social and political sciences at the University of Cambridge, is the author of three books including Singapore: the Air-conditioned Nation (2000) and Freedom from the Press: Journalism and State Power in Singapore (2012).
THE asked Prof. Andersson about the matter in an interview published in December. He said: “One can have different opinions if that academic decision (by) our tenure committee was right or not. That is an academic decision. But the decision was not political.” Prof. Andersson then issued a “clarification” stating “there was no intention to lower the reputation or standing of Dr. George in his field of work”.
But that wasn’t good enough for Dr. George, who countered on his blog: “The issue (here) does not boil down to ‘different opinions’, as (Andersson) suggests, but the following objective facts that contradict his quotes. First, I was assessed to have met the university’s academic criteria for promotion and tenure in 2009. Second, NTU withheld tenure nonetheless. And third, it gave only political and not academic reasons for its decision.”
In his blog post, Dr. George challenged Prof. Andersson to release all documents relating to his tenure case, including the “handwritten notes from the meeting of 2010 at which the reasons for withholding tenure were explained to me by then (university) president (Su Guaning) and provost (Andersson), watched over by the permanent secretary of the ministry of education in her capacity as a member of the board of trustees”.
THE tried to verify Dr. George’s version of these events by seeking comment from NTU on the blog post, and asking whether it would release the documents in question. However, an NTU spokesman said the university “will not be making any further comments”. Added a spokesman for the ministry of education: “Tenure decisions are made by autonomous universities.”
(Excerpted and adapted from )