It is not often that one takes a favourable view of interference by a minister in the affairs of a university, but the convoluted, logic-defying reasoning of the Universiti Malaya vice-chancellor, combined with his obduracy, in rejecting lecturer Edmund Terence Gomez's secondment application, makes the minister's intervention not just acceptable, but imperative.

As an alumnus of UM, I feel extremely embarrassed by this episode that flies in the face of the university's avowed aspiration to become a world-class institution of higher learning. Enough has been said elsewhere about how the university - and indeed the country - will gain if Gomez is able to take up his UN posting without let or hindrance.

I would only add here that it is a petty mind that is unable to recognise a towering Malaysian when it encounters one.

If the vice-chancellor is able to comprehend the full import of the minister's action in revoking Gomez's enforced resignation, he will realise the that only honourable course of action open for him now, is to exchange Gomez's resignation letter with his own.