Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . A sociologist, a political scientist, a media studies professor, and two economists meet in a webinar to talk about Singapore beyond the pandemic. The sociologist emphasizes the social inequities surfaced by the pandemic. The political scientist urges a mindset change from profit calculation to moral reasoning in the formulation of public policy. The media studies professor warns of the dangers of fanning nationalistic rhetoric. One of the two economists argues that efficiency pursued to the detriment of social justice actually becomes inefficient. The other economist wants Singapore to change its input-based development model because it has not been working for the country for years before the present crisis. Although the webinar is not about hawker food or getting ahead in school, it attracts scores of people, partly because the speakers have strong social-media followings, and partly because it is so refr...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Year of the Metal Rat brings some good news. In response to the cancellation of Alfian Sa'at's "Dialogue and Dissent" class by Yale-NUS last year, Yale University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Senate passed a resolution recommending "the establishment of clear criteria and procedure" to handle such episodes involving free speech and academic independence. Singapore Unbound supports the recommendation wholeheartedly, but we are disappointed that the Senate "did not express explicit regret that, due in no small measure to this flawed institutional process, the victim Alfian Sa’at was publicly pilloried, including in [the Singaporean] parliament by the minister of education," as Linda Lim, Yale alumna and professor emerita at the University of Michigan, was quoted in the Times Higher Education . You may have heard ...