What It Means to Have a Range of Perspectives
Weekly column written for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here.
In a previous column in this newsletter, I asked readers to write to the President of Yale University to support a fact-finding mission regarding the cancellation of a learning module titled "Dialogue and Dissent in Singapore" at Yale-NUS College. The Yale report, published on September 29, finds that "the decision to cancel the module was made internally and without government interference in the academic independence of the College.... [And] the evidence does not suggest any violations of academic freedom or open inquiry." However, the instructor of the module, playwright Alfian Sa'at, in a Facebook note published yesterday, charged that some members of Yale-NUS College "have been lying." He has "detailed emails and Whatsapp messages that will definitively prove that the allegations [of defiance, recklessness, and incompetence against him] are false and defamatory." He is crafting a press release to give his side of the story.
The Yale report raises many questions, a few of which were voiced by Yale faculty in Yale Daily News. For one instance, the report's conclusion that the module was cancelled "without government interference" deserves further scrutiny. According to the report, Yale-NUS President Tan Tai Yong "reached out" to a Ministry of Education official who serves on the Yale-NUS Governing Board to see "if the Ministry could intervene with police in order to ensure that students would not be arrested if they went to Hong Lim Park." The report does not say whether Tan emailed or phoned; email would have provided a complete record of that conversation, including the responses of the MOE official. Such ambiguity in the report's wording must raise eyebrows. It would have been an easy matter to publish all correspondence related to the module cancellation. Because the controversy is of intense interest, not just to Yale University, but also to all Singaporeans, it would have been the right thing to do.
Even if Tan contacted the MOE official for the sole purpose of ensuring student safety, it is revealing that he should think that MOE would have influence with the police. In this instance, the MOE official apparently chose not to exercise this influence by falling back on the formal separation of powers, claiming "she did not have authority over the police," according to the Yale report. We must remember that the legal risk to international students that Tan was concerned about involves the extraordinary prohibition of the participation of foreigners in protests at the only legal venue in Singapore for protests. Extraordinary, when Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan felt free as a foreigner to march with other foreigners in a climate rally in Canada.
Ethical ideals do not function in a political vacuum. The rule of law, for instance, is one such ethical ideal, but if the laws of the land are unjust, the rule of law will serve injustice. According to the Yale report, one of the objections expressed by the "senior leadership" of Yale-NUS against the canceled module was that the module "did not include a range of political perspectives." To its credit, the report did not find that objection a convincing reason in itself for the cancellation because other courses at the college offered that range. To have a range of perspectives is, of course, a good thing, but in Singapore, where one political party has an iron grip on all the levers of power and all the channels of mass communication, the dominant political perspective is already very well-represented. In that political context, we need to highlight minoritized perspectives instead.
And minoritized perspectives were precisely what Alfian Sa'at chose to highlight in his module proposal. It is a savage irony that, after the module cancellation, Yale-NUS's institutional narrative, with its biases and gaps, has dominated media coverage of the affair, sidelining the individual artist's story. It is very telling that in its town halls with students and meetings with staff, Yale-NUS had not invited Alfian to give his side of the story. This omission gives the true measure of the college's commitment to a range of perspectives.
Jee Leong Koh
October 2, 2019
In a previous column in this newsletter, I asked readers to write to the President of Yale University to support a fact-finding mission regarding the cancellation of a learning module titled "Dialogue and Dissent in Singapore" at Yale-NUS College. The Yale report, published on September 29, finds that "the decision to cancel the module was made internally and without government interference in the academic independence of the College.... [And] the evidence does not suggest any violations of academic freedom or open inquiry." However, the instructor of the module, playwright Alfian Sa'at, in a Facebook note published yesterday, charged that some members of Yale-NUS College "have been lying." He has "detailed emails and Whatsapp messages that will definitively prove that the allegations [of defiance, recklessness, and incompetence against him] are false and defamatory." He is crafting a press release to give his side of the story.
The Yale report raises many questions, a few of which were voiced by Yale faculty in Yale Daily News. For one instance, the report's conclusion that the module was cancelled "without government interference" deserves further scrutiny. According to the report, Yale-NUS President Tan Tai Yong "reached out" to a Ministry of Education official who serves on the Yale-NUS Governing Board to see "if the Ministry could intervene with police in order to ensure that students would not be arrested if they went to Hong Lim Park." The report does not say whether Tan emailed or phoned; email would have provided a complete record of that conversation, including the responses of the MOE official. Such ambiguity in the report's wording must raise eyebrows. It would have been an easy matter to publish all correspondence related to the module cancellation. Because the controversy is of intense interest, not just to Yale University, but also to all Singaporeans, it would have been the right thing to do.
Even if Tan contacted the MOE official for the sole purpose of ensuring student safety, it is revealing that he should think that MOE would have influence with the police. In this instance, the MOE official apparently chose not to exercise this influence by falling back on the formal separation of powers, claiming "she did not have authority over the police," according to the Yale report. We must remember that the legal risk to international students that Tan was concerned about involves the extraordinary prohibition of the participation of foreigners in protests at the only legal venue in Singapore for protests. Extraordinary, when Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan felt free as a foreigner to march with other foreigners in a climate rally in Canada.
Ethical ideals do not function in a political vacuum. The rule of law, for instance, is one such ethical ideal, but if the laws of the land are unjust, the rule of law will serve injustice. According to the Yale report, one of the objections expressed by the "senior leadership" of Yale-NUS against the canceled module was that the module "did not include a range of political perspectives." To its credit, the report did not find that objection a convincing reason in itself for the cancellation because other courses at the college offered that range. To have a range of perspectives is, of course, a good thing, but in Singapore, where one political party has an iron grip on all the levers of power and all the channels of mass communication, the dominant political perspective is already very well-represented. In that political context, we need to highlight minoritized perspectives instead.
And minoritized perspectives were precisely what Alfian Sa'at chose to highlight in his module proposal. It is a savage irony that, after the module cancellation, Yale-NUS's institutional narrative, with its biases and gaps, has dominated media coverage of the affair, sidelining the individual artist's story. It is very telling that in its town halls with students and meetings with staff, Yale-NUS had not invited Alfian to give his side of the story. This omission gives the true measure of the college's commitment to a range of perspectives.
Jee Leong Koh
October 2, 2019
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