Brand new era for Universiti Teknologi MARA?
Azly Rahman
We must congratulate anyone who suggests that Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) be open to non-Bumiputeras; a good suggestion indeed and UiTM students and alumni should in fact be proud that such a statement of hope and reconciliation is made public.
More than merely ten percent should be allocated for Malaysians of other ethnic groups. This is indeed and excellent way to begin restructuring our public universities so that they can become truly global and embrace multiculturalism as a pillar of intellectual pride.
This will be in tune with the spirit of the Olympics in which there will be competition amongst the races. Way too long the Malay students in UiTM have been unfairly denied the opportunity to collaborate and cooperate with their peers from other ethnic groups in the learning process. They have been shackled in a place wherein the only ideology they know is one of “Ketuanan Melayu”; a concept that is a contradiction to what a university must aspire to become. The 3-4 years of their wonderful college experience should provide them the skills to work in a multicultural environment.
Many “Bumiputra-centric” institutions have opened up to non-Bumputras in order for us see a reflection of Malaysian-ness in diversity. Universiti Perguruan Sultan Idris, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and Maktab Rendah Sains MARA are examples. There is no need for the administrators and students of UiTM to be upset over such a proposal.
Restructure leadership first
But a larger issue is we must first begin restructuring the leadership of all our universities to reflect our desire for Malaysians to be truly Malaysian, “truly Asian” as the slogan goes.We must begin by closely reading the philosophy and principles of affirmative action and translate these into practice and to monitor its successes.
Let us do a better job with our policies of diversity and affirmative action in order to find a peaceful solution to the dead-end issues of quota, meritocracy, dread, mundaneness, blind nationalism, cemented racism, closing of doors to the best and the brightest, and a spectrum of malaise in our public universities. Our vice-chancellors must enculturalise what is good, new, and true that they have learned from their alma mater in foreign lands, so that they can govern institutions with purity of thought. Most of them are US, UK, and Australian-trained and well-versed in the issue of diversity and affirmative action.
The problem is that many get afflicted by philosophical amnesia as soon as we are back in Malaysia after many years of studying abroad and learning about what worked in advanced countries. We let ‘this old house we inhabit’ define the culture that will intellectually disable us. The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the US proclaimed its commitment to diversity in a statement issued on Sept 20, 1999:
“At UCLA, a public university located in one of the most heterogeneous regions in the world, diversity is an indispensable element of academic excellence. We are fundamentally committed to including and integrating within the campus community individuals from different groups as defined by such characteristics as race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic background, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, and intellectual outlook.
“This commitment requires efforts to attract to the campus members of historically under-represented racial and ethnic groups. However, to create a rich academic experience and intellectual and cultural environment for everyone, we extend our concern beyond representation to genuine participation. Our commitment to diversity entails devising strategies and programmes to realise its benefits fully in education, research and service. This commitment inevitably means an openness to change – indeed, to transformation.”
Einstein once said that we cannot solve problems from the same plane on which the problem was created. We would be going around in circles, looking for the door to equality, justice and wisdom in our collective hope of creating a nation of peace-loving Malaysians. The New Economic Policy and the problem of race in governance of our universities must be framed within the Einsteinian maxim.
Need for multi-cultural audit
Many would like to see a diverse team of top leadership in our public universities. Chinese, Indian, Iban or Kadazan Malaysian students would like to see a vice-chancellor or a deputy vice-chancellor of their ethnicity. Our foreign students are not lured here to learn more sophisticated political-economic forms of racism.
A multi-cultural mix of top leadership will ensure a good sense of student belonging to the university and will show the world that not Malaysia will not only has a ‘world-class’ image but also practises a ‘world-wise’ educational policy. Universiti Teknologi MARA, in this case, can be made less Malay and more multi-cultural, so that we may teach students to view success not solely in racial terms but through a transcultural lens. This university will benefit intellectually and culturally from a good composition of multi-cultural leadership. A multi-cultural university senate may help ease the migraine of the quota mentality and will educate the top leadership on the need to evolve wisely thorough good affirmative action policies that are also in line with the teachings of the great religious traditions and humanistic educational philosophies.
Islam, Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and even atheism teach us to look at human beings not through the eyes of race alone. A good system will look at class as a basis of creating a just system that brings out humanism in all of us. The concept of democracy in education demands us to integrate all the diverse cultures so that each may learn to better respect, and next, help each other build better a vision of an ethical society.
