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Yale’s Singapore Venture
The Alumni Discuss
November/December 2010
I am a Singaporean and a Yale alum. I care about Yale’s academic reputation and I think Yale stands to lose more than it stands to gain with this venture.
It is an indication of the political controls the Singapore government imposes on its citizenry that I do not feel comfortable writing this comment under my own name.
Yale will be joining its name to a regime that has long muzzled the media and the political opposition. Singaporeans cannot engage in dissent without fear of repression. They cannot take part in peaceful demonstrations nor make critical comments in the blogosphere. There exists a high level of self-censorship, which the government all but encourages.
I’m not convinced that guarantees of academic freedom inside the classroom alone can justify the compromises that professors and students have to make once they step outside the classroom. Yale faculty in Singapore will be constrained from speaking out publicly on issues on which the government has defined as out-of-bounds, but which individual faculty might feel obliged to highlight as a matter of ethics or morality.
The Singapore government has a record of adopting illiberal positions on human rights and civil liberties. In the 1990s, the Singapore government charged Dr. Christopher Lingle, a visiting academic at the National University of Singapore, for undermining the character of the judiciary because he dared to suggest in the International Herald Tribune that judges in Singapore were given to undue political influence. As if confirming the truth of that view, the court agreed with the government and fined Dr. Lingle S$70,000.
Will a Yale faculty who expresses a negative view of Singapore find himself or herself in the same boat?
In suggesting that Yale faculty and staff will have to be sensitive to Singapore’s domestic politics, President Levin is already undermining Yale’s reputation, the integrity of its faculty, and the spirit of the liberal arts.
I have to oppose this project.
Name withheld
Editors’ note: the Yale Alumni Magazine agreed to keep this comment anonymous after verifying the writer’s identity. |
