Veteran DAP politician Lim Kit Siang will call a meeting next Thursday to propose the formation of an all-party parliamentary caucus on higher education.

He said this would also support Prime Minister Abdullah Ahamd Badawi's aim to create "towering Malaysian personalities".

The caucus could do this by working to end the erosion of academic excellence in Malaysian public universities and create a world-class university system.

Lim said he would seek the support of Abdullah, Higher Education Minister Dr Shafie Salleh and Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz, the minister in the Prime Minister's Department.

Speaking at a farewell dinner last night for UM academic Dr Edmund Terence Gomez, Lim also called on all members of Parliament who were formerly academicians to support the caucus.

"I hope Dr Wan Hashim Wan Teh (BN-Gerik), Ahmad Shabery Cheek (BN-Kemaman), Dr Ting Chew Peh (BN-Gopeng), Siti Zaharah Sulaiman (BN-Paya Besar), and Kamarudin Jaafar (PAS-Tumpat) will not only support it but play a leading role in the caucus," he said.

He said the premier needs help from all parties to stem the decline in academic quality, standards and excellence, and to achieve teaching and research excellence instead.

Lim was among those who had highlighted Gomez's resignation as economics lecturer in Universiti Malaya, when he was not given unpaid leave to take up a two-year secondment to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

Culture of fear

He said this was not just about the predicament of Gomez and his wife Dr Sharmani Patricia Gabriel - who teaches in the same university - but about the larger cause of academic excellence in the universities.

"There is a deep culture of fear among the academics in the universities, which is the antithesis of what an university stands for - where there is academic freedom for academics to think freely and to speculate on new ideas," he noted.

"In Malaysia, however, the state of universities has become so dismal that terms like 'university autonomy' and 'academic freedom' are hardly heard even in academic circles."

The farewell dinner, organised by the DAP, was held in Kelana Jaya and attended by some 300 people.