The Financial Times looked at how the prominence given by Warwick University to the question of academic freedom in its rejection of the branch campus idea, would impact on future efforts to attract top universities to Singapore. From this point on, the Financial Times explained, this question has to be grappled with if Singapore wants to be an education hub.

The Straits Times also examined the question of academic freedom. But the main slant of the story was that it shouldn't be such a big issue. It quoted Thio Li-Ann's example of how Jamie Han was still alive, and John Ingleson's comment, "We have seen the boundaries opening up in Singapore and... we believe it will open up further." Ingleson is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of New South Wales, which is building its branch campus here.

It also quoted the Economic Development Board's director of services cluster Kenneth Tan, who said, "there is scope for healthy and rigorous academic discussions and debates in a classroom setting that are objective and accurately grounded".

We will analyse this statement in more detail further down.

But the Straits Times also mentioned Warwick's example of Salman Rushdie giving a talk at the university in Coventry. Can anyone imagine the Singapore government permitting him here to give a talk? His book, The Satanic Verses, has been banned. Can it even be taught in Singapore? The Straits Times posed this question.

So, I'd say, things have improved a wee bit. A decade ago, our press here would be going full bore defending the government, dismissing Warwick's concerns. Now, it's more ambivalent.

Perhaps that justifies the tiny little promotion in the Reporters Sans Frontiers' 2005 Press Freedom Index. Singapore has just been ranked 140 out of 167 countries, compared to last year's ranking of 147 (also out of 167). 

The promotion notwithstanding, there is still less press freedom in Singapore compared to other Southeast Asian countries except junta-ruled Burma, communist Vietnam and communist Laos.

Aren't we proud to be living here?

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The EDB's answer, "there is scope for healthy and rigorous academic discussions and debates in a classroom setting that are objective and accurately grounded," doesn't address the question of academic freedom enough.

Firstly, it is severely qualified by "in a classroom setting", and "objective and accurately grounded." Essentially, this says, you can debate about facts within the 4 walls. Period.

But what about publishing? What about bans on invited speakers, whose words and insights serve to seed thought and enhance education? What about libraries that cannot contain banned books and banned films?

What about student and research projects that may be considered "morally sensitive" or "politically partisan"? As pointed out in my earlier article, What it takes to attract a university (and also mentioned by the Financial Times), Cherian George, an academic, has recently been accused by the government of being politically partisan when he wrote a paper analysing the government's methods of political control. At least George is a Singapore citizen. Would an expatriate lecturer find his visa inexplicably cancelled if he did the same?

The use of the words "objective" and "accurate" seem precisely to presage that. It is all too easy for the government to slam somebody's opinion as "subjective", giving themselves reason to clamp down.

Is education and research merely to be confined within ivory towers? It appears that the EDB and the Singapore government sometimes want it to be so. Where they have commercial value, then of course, they say, education and research should interface with the real world so that society benefits. But where they have political and societal implications upon their grip on power and the docility of the population?

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For many years, the government promoted Confucianism. It's an applied philosophy that dates from the feudal period of China's history, stressing respect for rank and authority from those in the lower strata, in return for the obligation to be fair and benevolent from those above. It's an infinitely scalable concept. It applies to within families (sons must respect and obey their fathers, but fathers must provide for them and be fair), as it applies to kingdoms (citizens must obey rulers...)

Confucius taught that when everyone observed this mutuality of respect and obligation, there would be harmony on earth.

It suited the People's Action Party government to have an unquestioning population, at the same time paint themselves as fair and benevolent. It was a real handy term to say "Confucian" rather than let others call them "authoritarian". 

Thus, through the 1980s and even into the 1990s, they spoke glowingly of Confucianism (often in tandem with the Asian Values public-relations campaign), and former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong liked to refer to himself and his cabinet as 'junzi' -- men of great integrity in the Confucian mould.

If only Confucius could have lived in Singapore to legitimise our government!

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Funny thing about Confucius, in the later part of his life, he was an academic.

Now, let's tell a little story about this old man.

Confucius -- a latinisation of Kongfuzi -- was born in 551 BCE, the illegitimate son of a minor government official, and for over 20 years of his working life, he too was a government official. By some accounts, he rose quite high, to something equivalent to minister of justice, but how significant this position was is difficult to say since those times were so different from ours.

Those times....

China was still in the iron age, and society was structured in feudal ways. Nominally, the Zhou dynasty reigned. In Confucius' time, the Zhou capital was at Luoyang, in today's Henan province. However, the Zhou monarch was little more than a figurehead; his power hardly reached past Luoyang's city walls.

The Zhou ruling family originated from the Wei River valley, in today's Shaanxi province, a mountainous region with fertile valleys. In the 11th century BCE, they grew strong enough to conquer the Shang dynasty domains of the northern Chinese plains. With that, the Zhou gained supremacy over most of then-known China. 

Compared to today's China, then-known China is only a fraction of the land area, but it was still vast considering the transport and communication capabilities of the time. Outside of the ancestral core territories in the Wei valley, the various city-states had considerable autonomy. There were said to have been some 150 city-states under the early Zhou.

In 771 BCE, foreign "barbarians" sacked the capital (exactly where the capital then was is disputed by historians, some say the city of Hao, others say it was Zongzhou, yet others say.....) and killed the Zhou king. The entire administration fled eastwards, and after some moving around, finally based themselves at Luoyang from 722 BCE onwards.

With this flight, the Zhou dynasty was displaced from its core territories in the Wei valley, and had to depend on its erstwhile vassals for support. Chinese historians consider the Zhou kings as mere figureheads from this point on.

Thus ended the 'Western Zhou' period, and the 'Spring and Autumn' period began.

Unconstrained by any effective central government, the richer and more powerful city-states began to annex their neighbours, and gradually, they were consolidated into 4 or 5 major duchies (the number varied over time), with a few more minor ones. The consolidation was not peaceful; there was virtually continuous warring for over 100 years until, through exhaustion, a truce was agreed between the major duchies of Qi, Qin, Jin and Chu in 579 BCE.

According to historical records, during this period, a total of 36 kings were killed and 52 smaller and weaker states were annexed.

It was in this context that Confucius, over his long life, formulated his ideas about social and political order. Subjects should obey the ruler -- was his answer to the scourge of endless rebellions. Rulers should rule justly and benevolently -- was his answer to questions of legitimacy and lasting peace. Scale everything up to "all under Heaven", and there would be no more wars between duchies. Peace and harmony was his obsession, perfectly understandable given those times.

Confucius lived most of his life in the duchy of Lu, whose capital was the city of Qufu. Lu was a relatively small duchy in the western part of present-day Shandong, sandwiched between the far more powerful duchies of Qi to the north and Chu to the south. He served the Dukes of Lu loyally but eventually got completely disillusioned.

He felt the rulers ignored his advice. Again, that was hardly surprising. Those were dangerous times, and it probably took very hard men, prepared to rule harshly, to gain power and stay in power. Paying attention to rituals to placate Heaven, cultivating personal moral perfection to earn others' respect and ruling benevolently to keep the people contented, as Confucius advised, were expendable concerns.

After leaving government service, Confucius started teaching, but at the same time, he kept carping from the sidelines at what he saw were mistakes in governance by the ruling families of Lu. 

Finally, he decided to give himself a break. He undertook a 12-year journey, visiting many other duchies. Wherever he went, he tried to offer advice to the local rulers, almost all of whom disregarded his views. This did not stop him from commenting on those duchies' affairs to his students and whoever else might listen, as his writings showed.

(In Singapore, we call that "interfering in other countries' domestic politics")

He finally returned to Lu where he spent his last years as a teacher. He had become very well-known and students eagerly sought him out for advice. Yet rarely was the Lu court prepared to take up any suggestions from him, and he remained critical of his own duchy's politics.

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It wasn't until some centuries after his death in 479 BCE, that his teachings began to be applied to governance. Then, for 2 millennia, the Confucian creed of ethics and morality held sway over China, serving the country very well, providing a compass for good governance until more modern systems of thought began to contest it.

Yet the point of retelling Confucius' life story is to show how he was in his most prolific years an outsider. He was an academic who fearlessly commented on the failings of rulers, both of his own duchy and others. He didn't see learning as divorced from application to politics and society. He was convinced that new ideas coming out of thought and reflection (we can call it "research") should be voiced and proposed to governments, even if rulers didn't welcome them. He must have been a pest.

What if Confucius were alive today and wanted to come to Singapore during his 12-year sojourn? Given his penchant for trying to influence political thought and process, would he be expecting too much academic freedom? Would he be accused of being partisan? Would our Straits Times have a headline announcing, "Confucius not allowed to teach here"?

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