Niki Cheong

Former UM Vice-Chancellor speaks out in Malaysiakini

Nov 19, 2008 News Breaks

Woah! Talk about spilling the beans.

Days after Datuk Rafiah Salim - who was replaced earlier this month by Prof Datuk Dr Ghauth Jasmon - made headlines after lots of talk in Parliament about the lack of gender equality when it came to choosing VCs (among other things!), the ex-Universiti Malaya VC has spoken up in a one-hour interview with Malaysiakini (Part 1 and Part 2).

These articles are not free - you need to be a subscriber of the online news portal to read them - but among the points she brought up are:

1. Rafiah claims that it is gender bias which led to her not being re-appointed as Vice-Chancellor. The article read:

Explaining her allegation of gender bias, Rafiah said she recently learnt that the women VCs were only given a two-year contract while male VCs were given a three-year contract. This included her successor Prof Dr Ghauth Jasmon.

“Doesn’t this [show they are] more confident in men than in women?” she questioned.

2. She claims that there was many political influences with regards to many decisions a VC must make, including who gets invited to speak at the University.

“Things like who can we bring in to speak to the students, who we can’t - even among the Barisan Nasional people,” she revealed during an hour-long interview with Malaysiakini yesterday.

And later said:

To a question, she admitted that one recent case of such political interference was UM’s decision to cancel a speech by Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi who was to speak there early this month.

The university had withdrawn its invitation to Ebadi, an outspoken critic of the human rights situation in Iran, two weeks before she was to deliver a speech on Islam and cultural diversity.

3. On student politics, Rafiah said that she had no issues with students getting involved with politics, unless it interfered with their studies.

On students’ freedom, Rafiah said she did not mind her students being active in politics provided that it did not come at the expense of their studies.

“Join-lah (politics), what the heck man, except that I am very firm with students that if they are so involved in politics and not focused on their studies, that would get me very angry,” she said.

I don’t think many people will be at all surprised at any of these revelations. But I suppose it is good that people directly involved in it are speaking publicly, instead of there being rumours and stories floating around which is hard to substantiate (grapevines, as efficient as they are, cannot be trusted 100%, I suppose).

The article also mentioned that Rafiah will soon be writing a book about UM. Wonder if more dirt emerge.

11.08am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

Tags: Ghauth Jasmon, malaysiakini, Rafiah Salim, Universiti Malaya, Vice-Chancellor