How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly

Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,

The answer is blowin' in the wind.

- Bob Dylan, poet, songwriter, freedom fighter

A special committee with representatives from various universities is carrying out a probe to monitor student involvement. The Higher Education Minister Mustapa Mohamed has stated that action would be taken against a group of 30 university students who were reportedly involved in campaigning and organising political talks during the recent by-election. Quoting the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971, he stated that disciplinary action would be taken, the most severe punishment of which would be expulsion.

- Trecia Yeoh, Center for Policy Studies, in malaysiakini May 4, 2007

Students facing expulsion for wanting to learn about the political process? For organizing talks on making political choices?

Is this how we develop the minds of our university students? Is this how we groom our most cherished youths whose university days ought to be imbued with idealism necessary to revolt against tyranny and oppression?

There must be something wrong in the way we understand human capital revolution in education. After 50 years of Independence, is this what we have reduced our universities into?

If the report is true, we must discuss this matter not only in Parliament but also in the universities. We must call for radical changes in the Universities and University Colleges Act that was passed in 1971. That archaic act cannot be allowed to remain intact.

The threat to act upon the 30 students explains clearly not just the hypocrisy of the leadership of our higher education but also the stubborn insistence that universities must remain appendages and tools of domination of political masters.

Blind loyalty

The threat of expulsion explains why academicians and students are to pledge blind loyalty to the government of the day through the Universities and University Colleges Act and through the fascistic document called " Surat Akujanji"

It explains my wonderment of what the UUCA and Surat Akujanji was about and what might be the consequence of academician's refusal to sign it. It explains clearly why my wife and I were dismissed by Universiti Utara Malaysia for our refusal to sign it.

That was the same university, funded by the rakyat, that suspended a student Rizal Anan for asking a question in a public forum. That was the same university run by a leader who inspired the birth of the problematic National Service. That was the same university that is now a stronghold of the Biro Tata Negara.

In our letter to the already-dismissed Dr Shafie Salleh who proclaimed that the Surat Akujanji is like a "Pledge to God", I stated that academicians should not be forced to sign such a document. Only boy scouts and Buckingham Palace guards do such things. Only angels must follow orders diligently, not human beings who must evolve intelligently.

No business of universities

Universities do not have the business to use their money to set up monitoring centers during by-elections. They have better things to do, such as developing their faculty members to become better critical thinkers and Socratic-teachers so that students can learn how to have different opinions, be respected for those opinions, and not be kicked out of campus for making a stand on social justice and morality.

We cannot survive as a nation if we stop students form becoming critical thinkers and voices of conscience. The world is too corrupt to be left to students only interested in their iPODS, Sidekicks, Blackberrys, and faculty members not skilled enough to develop students to become revolutionary thinkers.

It should have been clear what the role of universities are to produce good, ethical, and productive world-wise citizens and to improve the enterprise of creating generations of students able to vote corrupt regimes out of power, to install ethical leaders, and to establish a good republic of virtue.

There is a growing universalisation of paranoia in our public universities that students must be ensured to vote for this or that party. This constitutes mental enslavement.

University leaders are not "branch leaders of parties" to be reduced to such a status. They ought to have more dignity than that. They have to evolve above the rank of youth party leaders who are now beginning to employ gangsterish strategies to win hearts and minds of voters voters who are becoming more mature and intelligent while their elected representatives are becoming wealthier through extra-ethical means.

How would university lecturers respond to the alleged involvement of their leaders? Or how should they respond? Given that they are also bound by the Surat Akujanji, perhaps they will continue to display apathy.

They will not dare speak up even if they know that their role have been reduced to merely post-high school teachers following general orders circulated by their masters.

What a pity and a way to self-degrade one's hard earned instrumental intelligence. Truth and virtue do not matter any more. Whatever comes come.

Reclaim our dignity

We must stop this contradiction from mutating and metastizing to the mind, body, and soul of the universities.

What are university leaders afraid of?

Nothing I hope and I believe except to fear that they will not be able to develop the minds of the students to the fullest. That they are afraid of being unable to respect the right of the university community to express themselves without fear or favour? That these students will not be intimidated and be spied upon in a place wherein intellectual freedom ought to be promoted and guarded?

Years of hard work and experience studying abroad for most of the Vice Chancellors and faculty members will be wasted if they are used to design teaching and monitoring strategies to close shut the minds of the students.

"Take the kampong out of the kampong boy and girl" would be the best philosophy for the academic community. Do not let "kampong heroes" in politics dictate how the academic community should conduct themselves.

Kampong heroes come and go, according to the economic condition that produces them. Idealism and commitment to academic integrity stays. Virtue cannot be bought and sold.

The university, true to its name must reclaim its dignity as a unifying, integrative force of knowledge, wisdom, virtue, and service to humankind, not to become instruments of pleasure-seeking robber-baron politicians.

If university leaders go back to the definition of leadership, they might realize that it ought to not only be 'transformative" but "liberatory"; that the role to transform students not only into prized and well-sought after graduates but ones that will liberate the poor and the dispossessed form the shackles of neo-colonialist regimes and from the propaganda of "kampong heroes" who uses "kampong thugs" to win votes.

Time to change

We must teach our students how to invest in improving the lives of the poor - not to become rich-quick investment bankers that will make the poor poorer.

Why would the universities want to associate themselves with gangsta politics?

Comrades in academia- come back to our senses. Let us continue to evolve into higher beings and let us make politics subservient to philosophy. As a saying goes, we can no longer leave economics to politicians and political-economy to college professors.

We must be true to our profession. Our world has become way too corrupt. Our calling is to make it a more intellectually bearable place. There is still time to make such a change.