Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) has a new vice-chancellor - congratulations to Malaysia's self-proclaimed world-class management university.

The criteria for the choice of vice-chancellor did not quite meet those I had hoped for - probably not this time around.

The new vice-chancellor, Dr Nordin Kardi, interestingly is one who has been involved for decades with the Biro Tata Negara (National Civics Bureau) a governmental arm that ensures a specially crafted brand of nationalism to prevail.

Thousands, perhaps millions of schoolchildren, varsity students from within the country and abroad, and civil servants have undergone training programmes run by the Biro Tata Negara (BTN).

The 'all-bumiputera' retreat that I was, as a student, forced to attend utilised 1970s style 'subconscious strategies' of indoctrination to ensure 'subliminal messages' of a 'pseudo-nationalistic' version of patriotism is deeply structured into the mind of the subliminised. I doubt the underlying principles of the BTN retreat have changed much since.

UUM's new vice-chancellor has had seven years of experience as director-general of the BTN. He has devoted his academic life to the design and implementation of indoctrinating strategies.

I hope his plan is not to transform UUM into a huge northern campus of BTN, but instead plan to transform it into a truly intelligent, multi-cultural, and profound, and respected institution of higher learning.

He cannot merely be inspired by his patriotic songs, such as Anak Kecil Main Api (A Child Plays with Fire), but must craft an agenda of total transformation that will ignite the flames of intellectual fervor - not one that billows blind and outdated interpretation of political destiny.

A song composed 20 years ago cannot remain the same in a world in need of better answers.

Winds of change?

In what ways might UUM be transformed? How might intellectual development and the climate for academic freedom be improved? Will students be suspended for standing up for alternative point of views?

Will more lecturers be fired for standing up for their rights to preserve intellectual freedom? Will intellectually repressive practices of the previous vice- chancellor be continued?

The previous administration has done much to make sure that UUM is transformed into a political institute of higher learning, its function relegated to a breeding ground of those who can only see it as a battleground for political mileage, leaving its philosophical quest for academic and intellectual integrity high and dry. A great deal of intellectual damage was done.

Although the function of a university is to promote critical, creative, altruistic and futuristic thinking among its students, UUM via its previous vice-chancellor was primarily interested in making sure that its students cannot think of alternatives. Instead of crafting intelligent arguments in support of its 'official knowledge', it chose to use all the means at its disposal to make sure that there is only one prevailing truth in that university.

UUM was bankrupt of arguments to the growing voice that demanded answers on issue of intellectual freedom, dialogical spaces, and social justice.

Although the function of a university is to encourage members of its teaching faculty to be critical, open-minded, ethical, and possess deeply inquiring mind, UUM, via its previous administration chose to shove the Surat Akujanji (loyalty pledge) down the throat of its academicians without giving them the chance to get together to ask questions.

The previous administration was so bankrupt of its own ideology that it even dismissed two of its lecturers for questioning the contents of the Surat Akujanji .

There will be more lecturers that will be fired for exercising their fundamental rights of ensuring that their professional well-being is being taken care of.

UUM was bankrupt of even a simple explanation of how the Surat Akujanji will not be detrimental to the career of an academician. The previous administration was merely interested in preserving its function as a caretaker of an equally bankrupt university ideology.

Its administration believed that lecturers do not have the rights to question the content of the Surat Akujanji and that Malaysian universities and UUM specifically believes that academic freedom is will be something that will exist in a very distant future.

" Kebebasan akademik itu masih jauh lagi " (''academic freedom that's still too far down the road') was the answer given by its administration when asked about the contents of the Surat Akujanji and why all academicians in UUM need to sign it without any room for questioning. Those who have this truncated and demented belief of academic freedom need to be asked to resign.

That was what the previous administration was about - promoting self-interest, consolidating political linkages, bankrupting intellectualism, suspending students, and firing lecturers.

The new administration must not allow UUM to be further ridiculed by the national and international community. The new UUM must learn not to do those in order to be known as a 'Harvard of the East' as of 2005.

Will UUM make a 180 degree turn?

I believe it can if it plans to survive intellectually and break away from the shackle of domination built like an iron cage by the previous regime.

Education is based on the pedagogy of hope, liberation, and transformation.

Challenges for the VC

I challenge the new vice-chancellor and his new regime to do the following for UUM in order to turn it into a real learning organisation of the 21st century:

1. Discard the current Surat Akujanji and replace it with a version that will come from UUM's own Academic Freedom Committee. No lecturers who question its contents need to be dismissed. This will constitute an act of corruption of power carrying legal implications with it as well. If UUM is afraid of honest questions from its academicians, it must first do its homework diligently.

2. Instruct each faculty/department to set up its own academic freedom committee to propose, discuss, mediate, and produce statement of guarantees of academic freedom. This is necessary to protect academicians from rampant abuse of power by its administrators.

3. Proclaim a statement of 'non-partisanship' with any political parties so that UUM can be free to think and not free to be further colonised. The university is a scared intellectual space that must not be used as a tool of political demagogues. UUM has been known to be a politically-charged institution. Let this phase of the old and bankrupt regime pass.

4. Encourage students to be politically involved so that they may learn to be aware of better alternatives to the prevailing ideologies. No one has the sole claim to political truth. The idea of truth itself is one that is constantly evolving. UUM must help its students practise what is preached in courses such as Ilmu Pemikiran and Etika (Introduction to Thinking and Introduction to Ethics). In this age wherein money politics and political maneuverings are rampant, students need to use the skills and concepts they learn in class to expose corrupt and unethical practices in government and in business.

5 Encourage all points of social, political, economic, religious, and cultural points of view to prevail so that the next generation of students will be stronger intellectually. Give them the freedom to define their own political, economic and social future. After all these students want to have a say in what kind of moral and ethical government they wish to live under.

6. Train new lecturers in looking at structure of knowledge from multiple perspectives, be they from the Structural-Functionalist, Logical-Positivist, Post-Structuralists, Marxists and neo-Marxists, Religious, Futuristic, Ethnomethodological, and Phenomenological points of view so that they may challenge UUM students to deconstruct and reconstruct new knowledge. New UUM lecturers hunger for new knowledge that will help them break away from the mould of the old regime.

7. Encourage researchers in the Institute Pemikiran Tun Dr Mahathir ( photo ) to do critical research on the hegemonic system of thought that was left by that prime minister of 22 years. UUM needs to create good breed of home-grow critical theorists that will help enlighten others of the meaning of totalitarianism of all cultural forms. The purpose of learning in any university is not merely to uphold ideas of old and ancient regimes, but to inject critical sensitivity into taken-for-granted dominant ideas and break them apart so that a newer vision of the concept can emerge.

8. Encourage all UUM administrative staff members - from the vice-chancellor's chauffeur to the registrar to continue pursuing knowledge both for personal and professional advancement and to understand the meaning of intellectual freedom and human rights in a campus that is increasingly turning to become yet another indoctrination camp. UUM is not owned by an individual, a dynasty, a ruling party, or by an international financier - it is owned by the aspiration of the people whose allegiance is to the pursuit of truth; one that is ever-changing, evolving and open to newer constructions of its reality.

9. Attract a more ethnically diverse Malaysians and international candidates for teaching faculty, to reflect the growing diversity of UUM's population. Hire lecturers who will not 'teach students what to think' but 'how to think'. Attract them with an excellent remuneration package. The best and the brightest of the land will compete to teach in UUM. The more intellectually and ethnically diverse UUM faculty is, the better it will serve the students. UUM students deserve the best. They do not wish to be harassed and expelled for holding different opinions. They should in fact demand that UUM administrators be expelled for betraying the promises of a university.

10. Dive into the sea of possibilities of transformation and take risks on all spheres of governance and educational enterprises so that a truly intelligent Universiti Utara Malaysia may emerge decades from now. Intellectual stress is good for any university. The human mind is made to withstand such stress. Like a parachute, only if it is opened will it function.

The academic world is watching UUM transform anew and break away from the neo-colonialist mode of the regime of yesteryear. It is the only logical step for the university to take in order to call itself 'world-class' and a 'Harvard of the East'.

Should all these transformations happen at the end of three years, the current minister of higher education will be the proudest person - he had then made the right choice for UUM.

It would be such a waste of public money if the ways of the old regime remains the only way for UUM.

I wish UUM a safe and productive journey.