The ANU seems to be keeping a very low profile on the conferring of an honorary degree on Lee Kuan Yew. A search of the ANU web-site uncovers nothing on the matter except my previous New Mandala post. On the ANU web’s billboard we are advised of such gems as the prohibition of right-turns from Dickson Road into Clunies Ross Street and the “thrive at work” stress reduction program but not a word about the achievements of this international statesman. The ANU events program for next week is similarly silent. Nothing at all about Lee’s 28 March conferring ceremony. But we are informed about a seminar on the “international human rights system.” Perhaps Lee will be a surprise presenter!
But a search of the web does reveal some growing interest in the ANU honour. Uncle Yap’s eccentric looking blog even calls for a boycott of the ANU! And Viogger and Singabloodypore carry a letter protesting the honour purportedly written by Chee Soon Juan, Secretary-General of the Singapore Democratic Party. Here is an extract from the letter:
Academic freedom is a ghost consigned to wandering hopelessly in the halls of Singapore’s state-controlled universities. Academics such professors Christopher Lingle, Bilveer Singh, and Lim Chong Yah who publish information unflattering of Lee’s government were bullied into submission; Dr Lingle was forced to flee Singapore when he was interrogated by the police and subsequently criminally prosecuted. As a neuropsychologist, I was teaching at the National University of Singapore. I was sacked three months after I joined the SDP. When I disputed the dismissal, I was sued for defamation.
And given that ANU is honouring Lee with a Doctor of Laws the controversy about the decision of the International Bar Association to hold its 2007 conference in Singapore is worthy of some attention. The ever-informative Asia Sentinel has two very recent articles on the topic: here and here.
Food for thought.
[UPDATES: The Road to Surfdom has also has a brief post. Channelnewsasia has a story about Lee's schedule in New Zealand and Australia. The letter quoted above is available on the Singapore Democratic Party website. The Canberra Times is running a front page story today (Thursday) about "Anger at ANU honour for Lee."]
17 responses so far ↓
1 TH // Mar 21, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Note that the Uni of Melbourne also awarded him an honorary doctorate, in 1994, apparently. See here:
http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/international/downloads/FYWNS106/booklet_all.pdf
2 Bystander // Mar 22, 2007 at 6:35 am
Lee himself probably couldn’t care less about yet another degree. I don’t think he’s that insecure. So, I wonder why ANU feel the urge to associate themselves with Singapore’s ruling clique. Are they planning some expansion or branches or something like that? I don’t know.
Personally, I’m never a big fan of the practice of giving honorary degree. I mean, if someone has achieved something worthy of a degree, well, that achievement should have spoken for itself. They don’t need to be blessed by any academic pomp.
This brings to mind the honorary degree that Kasetsart gave to Tiger Woods awhile back. Or rather, I should the degree that KU foisted upon poor Tiger. He didn’t really want to get the degree, so the university big shots have to carry the diplomas to his hotel room… or something embarrassing like that.
3 Bystander // Mar 22, 2007 at 6:53 am
In the real world, academia can’t really stay as an ivory bastion of high-minded learning. After all, the professors and staffs need to eat, and be housed and clothed, utility bill needs to be paid, yada yada yada. Most of these are handled by the admin people and are thus shielded from average students and faculties, allowing them to bask in the scholastic glory most of the time.
Most schools just need to keep running just to stay where they are, though some schools will have it easier than others. And part of that is to be associated with the luminaries, head of state, etc., even though the conscience of many students and faculty members say otherwise. ANU is not unique. Everybody has its price. Some higher than another. Dubya, for example, got himself into Harvard Business School, despite a string of business failures. More recently, some people here may be aware of the case of a certain princess from the orient and her ivy league law school education.
4 Pig Latin // Mar 22, 2007 at 9:59 am
Nobody has asked, will you be attending Andrew? Haha
Also, why is he being granted a second Doctorate of Laws? Is it competition with Uni of Melb…?
5 ANU Graduate // Mar 22, 2007 at 10:50 am
For those of us who remember Lee’s Singapore in an era which was less docile than today, you only have to think of how Lee’s secret police would kidnap suspected enemies of the state in the earliy hours of the morning, detain them in an undisclosed location, strip them naked, and force them to stand in front of an air-conditioner on cold for hours until they signed a confession. And for achievements like this the ANU awards Lee an honorary doctorate in law. Well, noone can claim now that the ANU is not trying to come down from the ivory tower.
6 Jon Fernquest // Mar 22, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Someone should hold an alternative awards ceremony to recognize his innovation of the defamation suit in electoral democracy. Other neighbouring democracies have stopped following his lead, thank goodness. Recognition of his ability to maintain the goodwill of super-power United States while at the same time serving as life-support system for non-democracy Burma that the US is highly critical of, what slight of hand! Doctor of magic, I’d say is more appropriate.
7 Andrew Leigh » Blog Archive » Dr Lee // Mar 22, 2007 at 7:53 pm
[...] 22/3: More from Tim at Road to Surfdom, Andrew Walker at New Mandala, and today’s Canberra [...]
8 John Francis Lee // Mar 22, 2007 at 10:57 pm
‘ Someone should hold an alternative awards ceremony to recognize his innovation of the defamation suit in electoral democracy. Other neighbouring democracies have stopped following his lead, thank goodness. ‘
I don’t know that that is true. Thaksin certainly followed the Lee lead in many ways, not least of which was to sue his critics for outrageous sums to shut them up. He had not yet made bankruptcy as a result of lawsuits automatic grounds for disqualification for office as the Lees have in Singapore.
But the tactic was nearly as effective in Thailand as in Singapore, at east among those who had cash to lose. Like the Bangkok Post. Remember when the former PM had their editor canned and threatened to sue for grillions if the paper did not back off of its “slander” concerning cracks at the former PM’s New International Airport? It’s amazing how peoples’ ability to see those cracks improved once the former PM was run out of town.
No I think that the former PM was instrumental in bringing many of the Lees’ “innovations” to Thailand. And of course he sold all his political spoils to the Lees as well.
Of course the former PM is not alone among the Thai political inhis admiration for the Lees’ political model. Most of them view Thailand as a City State as well. The City State of Bangkok. It just has a firmer grip on its hinterlands than the Lees’ grip on Malaysia and Indonesia.
9 Srithanonchai // Mar 23, 2007 at 12:06 am
Thaksin also admired newspapers on sale in Singapore for having very little political content, but were talking instead about technological innovations. He also pointed to the size of the opposition in Parliament as his model for Thailand. But since Thaksin messed everything up, he will never receive an honorary PhD from ANU, or Melbourne.
10 Young Labor Left » Blog Archive » Snap Action! Protest ANU’s Honorary Doctorate for Lee Kwan Yew // Mar 23, 2007 at 4:42 am
[...] McKinley (in the ABC’s coverage), and on their personal blogs. Andrew Walker of the RSPAS at New Mandela has also posted a letter from Stephen Dobbs of the University of Western Australia which is well [...]
11 Jon Fernquest // Mar 23, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Yet a new innovation:
“Nearly four years after Congress pulled the plug on what critics assailed as an Orwellian scheme to spy on private citizens, Singapore is set to launch an even more ambitious incarnation of the Pentagon’s controversial Total Information Awareness program…The Singapore prototype of the system …was rolled out early this week at a conference in the Southeast Asia city-state. Retired U.S. Adm. John Poindexter, the architect of the original Pentagon program, traveled to Singapore to deliver a speech at the unveiling, while backers have already begun quietly touting the system to U.S. intelligence officials.”
“In 2003, plans for Total Information Awareness, or TIA, sparked outrage among privacy advocates. TIA was one of several programs run out of the Information Awareness Office at Darpa, the Pentagon’s advanced research projects agency. Fueling public indignation was news that Poindexter, President Reagan’s national security adviser and a key figure in the ’80s Iran-Contra scandal, was in charge of the office.”
“Facing an avalanche of bad publicity, Poindexter resigned in August 2003. Congress pulled funding for the program, and TIA and related programs were either terminated or moved to other agencies. The Information Awareness Office was closed.”
“But Poindexter’s vision never lost currency among advocates of data mining, particularly in Singapore, a country that mixes elements of democratic governance with authoritarian rule….”
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,73046-0.html
Given Singapore’s past history, this system could set a scary precedent. Sorry, you’re in the database, no work for you, would certainly stifle any critical thought.
12 Ashamed Singaporean // Mar 23, 2007 at 5:50 pm
What is ANU thinking? You might as well honour Pinochet or Robert Mugabe!
Lee Kuan Yew is a anti-democratic Authoritarian. This is the man who jailed Mr Chia Tye Poh, a political opponent for 26 years WITHOUT TRIAL. Only to ‘release’ him on house arrest 1 day before Nelson Mandela was release in South Africa. Tactical move so that he would not become the longest serving political prisoner in the world.
This is the man who was behind the infamous “Myanmar Fund” which used public moneys to bankroll the likes of super drug lords like Lo Hsing Han – http://www.singapore-window.org/1020naus.htm
This is the same ‘retired’ man who literally controls a countries judiciary (appoints his mates as top judges), controls public moneys via private investment agencies overseas thru his company Singapore Government Investment Corporation, who levered his eldest son into the PM’s job, and minister of finance position and also levered his daughter in law Ms Ho Ching into controlling the massive Singapore government owned corporation “Temasek Holdings” which now own Optus, Westin Hotel, Queen Victoria building, the failed Ansett, Australand, and the former ANA Hotel, just to name a few.
13 Pig Latin // Mar 24, 2007 at 12:10 am
Did the law department have any say in Uncle LKY getting this degree?
14 patiwat // Mar 24, 2007 at 9:35 am
Harvard is joining the hypocrisy – it’s giving an honorary degree to Bill Gates! This is a man who a US court ruled to have actively blocking competition, in violation of the Sherman Act. This man, who founded one of the world’s largest and most predatory of companies, had the gall to ask the judge the meaning of the words “ask” and “we.” Even the European Union has found that he abused his market power.
Lee Kuan Yew might have been mean and oppressive, but he never broke the law (as far as I recall). But if even an institution like Harvard is giving an honorary degree to a rascal like Gates, then I guess anything is possible.
15 Chris Beale // Oct 21, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Well I arrived back in Oz, last week from Singapore via Phnom Phen and Laos. Singapore seems an island of stability and sanity, which Hun Sen’s Cambodia especially seems to be copying, allowing for local conditions.
Singapore seems more relaxed than before – I first visited in 1963 !!
Australian criticisms of Singapore take no account of Singapore’s local conditions. If you don’t like it – leave !!
16 R. N. England // Oct 22, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Though I have been known to defend political mud-slingers, and realise that they generally come to grief in Singapore, I also sympathise with the place, and think the experiment should be encouraged to run, without putting pressure on Singapore to be more like Australia. Suppression of mud-slinging allows the Singapore Government to get on with the job of administration, and the one-party system blocks the otherwise inevitable development of parliamentary factions based on race.
Here is an interesting paradox: Singapore is rated as low as Thailand in conventional estimations of press freedom, yet the Straits Times is one of the best English-language newspapers in the world, and the Nation and the Bangkok Post are amongst the worst. The main reason is that there is very little political mud-slinging in any direction in Singapore, yet a veritable torrent of shit is permitted, even propelled, by the Thai courts in one direction but absolutely not in another. Transparency International’s higher rating of Singapore than even Australia suggests that a blanket ban on political mud is not as corrupting as we think.
17 hclau // Oct 23, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Mud slinging comments treading the thin line separating it from jealousy. Personnaly, I commend LKY on the job he and his team had done with Singapore.
Comparision with Thailand or any country in Asean is a joke. There is simply no comparision. No yardstick to measure with, unless one only take a select class of citizen from a specific strata of society in the other Asean countries.
I would be very happy if the PM of Malaysia (najib) is a dictator like LKY… sadly he doesn’t come close
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