Resolution 'not meant to disrespect S'pore and NUS'
by Ng Jing Yng, TODAY, 9 Apr 2012
by Ng Jing Yng, TODAY, 9 Apr 2012
The passing of a resolution last week by Yale College faculty was not out of any disrespect to the Republic and the National University of Singapore (NUS), said the professor who crafted the resolution.
Among other things, the resolution expressed concern "regarding the history of lack of respect for civil and political rights" here. It also called on the planned Yale-NUS college to uphold principles of "non-discrimination for all ... civil liberty and political freedom on campus and in the broader society".
Political science and philosophy professor Seyla Benhabib told Today in an email that "the good people of Singapore and our colleagues at NUS should rest assured that we do not mean to disrespect their considerable achievements as a society".
She added: "But we do have different historical experiences, standards and values when it comes to matters of free speech in and out of the classroom; freedom of assembly; the rights of sexual minorities, the rights of migrants and many other matters."
Prof Benhabib reiterated that the faculty is "not holding up the USA government or society as an example". She said: "Many of us are critical of our own government's violation of these rights and values we hold dear."
She felt that the faculty's vocal stance on the matter exemplified the meaning of "freedom of speech". "This is our duty as educators; and no one - not even our President - can take away our right to express ourselves and to disagree with official policy. This is what makes Yale what it is," she said.
NUS vice-president (University and Global Relations) Lily Kong had earlier expressed disappointment with the resolution which, as she pointed out, "does not have binding effect" on the Yale-NUS College. Nevertheless, she noted that it is "an expression of the views of a proportion" of the Yale faculty.
The resolution was passed after a two-and-a-half-hour meeting.
Yale College dean Mary Miller, who chaired the meeting, told Today that the discussion was "characterised by civility and mutual respect by the faculty present, reflecting the best traditions of academic discourse and faculty collegiality". The professor added: "Several changes were proposed and accepted to the original language, resulting in the final resolution that was voted on."
Moving forward, the Yale professors are seeking a dialogue with their NUS counterparts, said Prof Benhabib.
While the Yale-NUS college is set to open its doors in August next year, Prof Benhabib said that the Yale College faculty is still in the dark over the "exact terms" of the agreement between Yale and NUS.
Yale president Richard Levin, who had opposed the resolution that was passed with a 100 to 69 vote, had previously said that the faculty had no vote on the project as it would not affect the American college.
But Prof Benhabib said: "Many of us on the Yale College Faculty believe that we should have had a chance to deliberate on matters relating to Yale-NUS; we should have been permitted to vote on agreements between the Yale Corporation, the NUS Administration, and the government of Singapore. We still do not know the exact terms of these agreements."
She added: "I am hoping that in the months ahead, we can engage in more honest and open conversations on these matters with colleagues in Singapore."
Responding to Today's queries, Prof Kong said NUS will be reaching out to the Yale professors who have raised objections to the tie-up and will discuss ways to do so with the Yale leadership.
Yale faculty passes resolution to express concern
TODAY, 7 Apr 2012
CONNECTICUT - It might be just a symbolic gesture but an important one nonetheless, according to Yale University professors: Yesterday, the American university's faculty voted 100 to 69 to pass a resolution expressing "concern regarding the history of lack of respect for civil and political rights in the state of Singapore".
The resolution, which was passed despite opposition from Yale president Richard Levin, also called on the planned Yale-NUS college to uphold principles of "non-discrimination for all ... civil liberty and political freedom on campus and in the broader society".
Nevertheless, those who voted for the resolution included supporters of the Yale-NUS college who said they hoped that it would strengthen the partnership between Yale and the National University of Singapore (NUS).
"It might be mainly symbolic but it is an important symbol," Yale professor of African-American studies and French Christopher Miller told The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Prior to the vote, Mr Levin read out a written statement: "I value the engagement of my colleagues and their commitment to important principles, even though I opposed the resolution because it did not capture the mutual respect that has characterised the Yale-NUS collaboration from the beginning."
After the vote, Mr Levin was quoted by Yale Daily News as saying that he "felt that the tone of the resolution, especially the first sentence, carried a sense of moral superiority that I found unbecoming".
According to the campus newspaper, the meeting lasted about two and a half hours and it "marked the first time faculty members have taken a stance on Yale-NUS through a formal vote".
The resolution was proposed last month by Yale philosophy and political science professor Seyla Benhabib. The professor told the newspaper: "I am really proud of the way in which the Yale College faculty rose to the occasion and debated relentlessly for two and a half hours this resolution and its details. I think we just have to sit back and take stock, but it's a big moment for Yale and this is not the time to spin things every which way."
According to The Chronicle, Yale professor of astronomy and physics Charles Bailyn, who will serve as the first dean of the faculty at Yale-NUS, reiterated that the vote "won't derail our work ... It doesn't change anything". Prof Bailyn also described the resolution as "unnecessarily confrontational to our collaborators" and said a commitment to free expression had always been part of the partnership.
Prof Miller, however, noted that the resolution "stakes some ground for the Yale College faculty to say that we're concerned and we're going to be involved".
Singapore 'an ideal place to engage with issues of democracy and liberalism', says Yale trustee
SINGAPORE - Countering the vocal opposition in the West - including among the Yale faculty members - to the American university's planned joint campus with the National University of Singapore (NUS), Yale trustee and prominent journalist Fareed Zakaria spoke out against what he felt was "a form of parochialism bordering on chauvinism ... on the part of supposedly liberal and open-minded intellectuals".
As the debate over Yale's partnership with NUS intensifies, Mr Zakaria lent his support to the Yale-NUS liberal college, which is scheduled to open next year.
Writing in the Yale Daily News - an independent newspaper published by Yale University students - Mr Zakaria offered a contrarian voice to the mounting opposition in recent weeks by detractors, whose views were also described by an NUS undergraduate in the Singapore university's campus newspaper as "careless, generalised stereotypes".
Mr Zakaria noted that criticisms of the Yale-NUS venture have "centred on Singapore's politics" and this has "obscured the fact that Yale-NUS is, above all, a pioneering educational experiment".
He added: "Singapore has a great deal to learn from America, and NUS has a great deal to learn from Yale.
"That's why they have engaged in this collaboration with us. But it is a form of parochialism bordering on chauvinism - on the part of supposedly liberal and open-minded intellectuals - not to see that we too, in America and at Yale, can learn something from Singapore."
Mr Zakaria noted that Singapore "is not a liberal democracy, though it is not so different from many Western democracies at earlier stages of development".
"It is not the caricature one sometimes reads about. Singapore is open to the world, embraces free markets and is routinely ranked as one of the least corrupt countries in the world," he added.
Mr Zakaria also said that the Republic has become "more open over the last ten years".
"In fact, it is to enhance and enrich this process that Singapore has invited Yale to help create a liberal arts college," he said.
And while there will be differences in perspectives among students and faculty, the disagreements make Singapore "an ideal place to engage with issues of democracy and liberalism".
Writing in NUS' student newspaper, undergraduate Koh Choon Hwee also spoke out against the criticisms levelled at Singapore by western academics and students.
Ms Koh wrote: "These scholars and students, whether or not they have been to Singapore, appear to see the world only through the blinkers of their prejudices."
She added: "Articles like theirs do nothing to promote intercultural communication and mutual understanding. How ironic then that they should so doggedly lambast the Yale-NUS College, which, as a collaborative educational venture between establishments from two vastly different cultures, aims to do precisely just that."
Contrary to perceptions of "repression", Ms Koh also noted that NUS students who are youth wing leaders of opposition parties go about their daily activities on campus like their peers. "Online student newspapers, like the Campus Observer and our own Kent Ridge Common are brimming with critiques of the university administration … and of the country's political system and politicians," she added.
Do We Need Yale?
Recent articles by the student Walker Vincoli (who had spent 2 semesters in NUS) and even by Yale faculty members argue against the Yale-NUS venture using simplistic, stock authoritarian-Asian regime stereotypes .
For Vincoli, “Singapore is not a free country and NUS is not a free university” and for these Yale faculty members, “They [architects of the Yale-NUS College] have thrust us into the politics of an authoritarian regime, in partnership with a university with seriously, dangerously compromised standards of academic freedom, including surveillance of faculty.”
The debate on this Yale-NUS venture certainly runs deeper and wider than this – and there are many more concerns at an institutional level that I, as a mere student, would not be able to appreciate as keenly as employees of both institutions. The only problem that bewilders me is the kind of careless, generalized stereotypes being traded not only by students, but also by Yale faculty members – which seems to betray the very ethos of good scholarship.
If Yale is asking herself if she should partner NUS/Singapore in this YNC venture, should we (NUS/Singapore) not be asking the same about Yale too, considering the quality of arguments proffered by some of her tenured best?
Because for these people, America is the land of the “free”. Every other country is shackled or fettered, unfree and forlorn, beyond comparison.
Because “freedom” in America is understood mainly as “freedom” from state intervention, so it is completely fine and dandy if oil tycoons fund philosophy departments in their universities because for them, only governments can interfere with freedom or with academic freedom, only governments have ill intentions. Corporations are persons in America, and can never interfere with “freedom” of persons hence. In America, “freedom” is freedom from the state, even if you’re still held in thrall by private corporations.
Vincoli’s experience in NUS where “[s]tudents change arguments, button their lips and absorb opinions from on high” jars so incongruously with the scene on the ground that one wonders what crowd he was hanging out with exactly.
Youth wing leaders of opposition parties – who are also NUS students – go about their activities on campus, and some are regular Dean’s Listers. Their names are well-known, and they have their supporters. Online student newspapers, like the Campus Observer and our own Kent Ridge Common are brimming with critiques of the university administration (here, and here too) and of the country’s political system and politicians (and this KRC articlealso features then-NUS undergraduate Seah Yin Hwa who directly challenged, in person, the Prime Minister at a ministerial forum – the Yahoo! news article here. Repression, much?) All these articles are written by NUS students who have published their full names online, proudly and openly. Just search the archives.
Yale faculty members critiquing the venture also default upon essentialized representations of Singapore and tend to obsess about the legality of homosexuality in this country. Shall we obsess too about Guantanamo Bay and other dubious “anti-terrorism” laws in the US, remnants of the disaster of George W. Bush’s (a Yale alumnus, no less) presidency?
Don’t get me wrong – the Yale-NUS joint venture can be critiqued in so many other ways (Potential elitism? Accessibility to those who cannot afford the fees? Institutional incoherence vis a vis YNC’s relationship with the mothership of NUS? Indeed, KRC has critiqued this venture before.), but I would have expected more sophisticated arguments from these Yale professors, not arguments that sound so typically Orientalist and which have already been used by so many (MO, YDN) before them.
These scholars and students, whether or not they have been to Singapore, appear to see the world only through the blinkers of their prejudices. Just like the Portugese explorer, Vasco da Gama, who landed in Calicut, India in 1498. Where there were Hindus, da Gama saw only Christians of a “tawny complexion”.
This point may resonate especially with Walker Vincoli, who spent two full semesters here without sensing any form of “everyday resistance” à la James Scott (who, incidentally, is at Yale, so he should be able to educate his colleagues about the multiple manifestations of resistances existing in other cultures), or even overt subversion or opposition at all (contrary to popular belief, the Illegal Assembly Laws are rarely enforced.) It is hard to believe that tenured Yale professors would accept such superficial analyses of a whole political system, nation.
Articles like theirs do nothing to promote intercultural communication and mutual understanding. How ironic then that they should so doggedly lambast the Yale-NUS College, which, as a collaborative educational venture between establishments from two vastly different cultures, aims to do precisely just that.
A global education for a global age
By Fareed Zakaria
By Fareed Zakaria
WHEN I arrived at Yale from India in the fall of 1982, I felt distinctly unprepared. I had gone to a first rate, rigorous high school in Mumbai but, like many entering freshmen, I found that Yale operated at a different level.
In one sense, though, I had an advantage. I had studied, in depth, a whole different civilisation, and that background in Indian history, politics and culture gave me a broader context in which to place my Yale education. If Yale's collaboration with the National University of Singapore (NUS) succeeds, it will create on a much grander and more sophisticated scale a global education, a unique blend of East and West, which would be a vital asset in an increasingly connected world.
Criticisms of the Yale-NUS venture have centred on Singapore's politics. This has obscured the fact that Yale-NUS is, above all, a pioneering educational experiment. Yale and NUS hope to create a new model for liberal arts education in Asia - with lessons for all of us all over the world.
Imagine a curriculum in which students read Aristotle but also Confucius, who was his contemporary, and ask whether culture or politics explains each thinker's concerns. Imagine studying the rule of Charles V, the Hapsburg emperor, but then comparing him to Akbar, who ruled more people in India contemporaneously. Imagine an introduction to science that focused on solving problems rather than memorising a body of material. The goal of the project is to create a liberal arts curriculum that spans Western, Asian and other traditions, that trains rigorously in science and social science and that will, as a result, provide inspiration for Asia's burgeoning universities and societies.
A few years ago, the previous minister of education of Singapore, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who played a key role in the proposal to bring the liberal arts to his country, compared the Singaporean and American systems: 'We both have meritocracies. Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. We know how to train people to take exams. You know how to use people's talents to the fullest. Both are important, but there are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well - like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority.'
This is the impressive and appropriate source of the Singapore Government's interest in liberal arts education. And Yale, more than any other institution I know, has 'a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom'. That is the kind of culture that Yale hopes to see develop on the Singapore campus.
Many top Singaporean and other Asian students already come to the United States to get this kind of education, but ultimately, for critical pedagogy of this type to spread throughout Asia, there need to be functioning models of high-quality, engaged and creative teaching in Asia itself. That is what Yale-NUS College will provide - a model for conducting residential liberal arts education in Asia.
In talking with the faculty and administrators who have been involved in planning, I have been impressed with three facets of the college: the commitment to critical and creative thinking, the efforts to link residential life ambitiously to the educational missions of the college and the effort to reinvigorate traditional liberal arts curricula for the needs of contemporary students in Asia. By testing our ideas in a very different context, however, we will surely learn things that will be helpful in enhancing the educational experience at Yale.
Singapore is not a liberal democracy, though it is not so different from many Western democracies at earlier stages of development. It is not the caricature one sometimes reads about. Singapore is open to the world, embraces free markets and is routinely ranked as one of the least corrupt countries in the world.
It has also become more open over the last 10 years. In fact, it is to enhance and enrich this process that Singapore has invited Yale to help create a liberal arts college. There will be differences in perspectives among students and faculty, foreigners and locals, but that makes it an ideal place to engage with issues of democracy and liberalism.
I can imagine a fascinating seminar on democracy that would be much feistier in Singapore than at Yale precisely because there will be those who take positions quite critical of what is received wisdom in the West.
Singapore has a great deal to learn from America, and NUS has a great deal to learn from Yale. That's why they have engaged in this collaboration. But it is a form of parochialism bordering on chauvinism - on the part of supposedly liberal and open-minded intellectuals - not to see that we too, in America and at Yale, can learn something from Singapore.
In fact, together, Yale and the National University of Singapore can teach the world a new way to think about education in a globalised world.
The writer is the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, editor-at-large of Time magazine and a successor trustee of the Yale Corporation.
This article first appeared at www.yaledailynews.com
This article first appeared at www.yaledailynews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment