AUG 27 — Yesterday, Anwar Ibrahim came to my university to talk about AUKU, students, academic freedom and the future of Malaysian universities. It was difficult not to think about what had happened at Universiti Malaya (UM) before.

In 2014, when Anwar was opposition leader, UM tried to stop a student-organised event featuring him by closing the university gates, only for students to push through anyway, after which disciplinary action was taken against those involved.

Yesterday, he returned not as the politician kept outside, but as prime minister, sitting in Dewan Tunku Canselor discussing how universities should become freer, moderating a forum with Higher Education Minister Zambry Abdul Kadir, Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek and Academy of Sciences Malaysia president Tengku Mohd Azzman Shariffadeen.

Anwar knows what political restriction looks like from the other side of the gate. He also knows, perhaps better than most political leaders, what it means to come from student activism and to know that universities must remain spaces of argument, dissent and political imagination. That history should make the stakes of this reform especially clear to him.

As I have argued on several platforms, repealing AUKU is only part of the work. The harder question is whether the culture it helped entrench will disappear with it.

Give students freedom and trust them enough to use it

Anwar said students should be given full freedom to express themselves and organise activities, and that universities must once again become spaces for critical thinking. More significantly, he directed universities to withdraw disciplinary action taken solely because students expressed critical views. This is welcome, but we should go further.

Students should not have to depend on the generosity of whichever vice-chancellor, minister or prime minister happens to be in power. Freedom that exists because someone powerful tolerates it is not freedom.

For decades, Malaysian university students have been treated simultaneously as adults when we want them to compete globally, innovate, lead and become “future-ready”, but as children when they organise politically, question authority or invite someone controversial onto campus. That contradiction has to end.

If we genuinely want intellectually serious universities, students must be allowed to organise events and confront difficult ideas without navigating excessive approval processes designed primarily to minimise institutional discomfort.

They will sometimes say things we dislike. They may invite people whom administrators would rather not see on campus, but that is part of university life. The purpose of a university is not to manufacture obedient graduates who have mastered the language of critical thinking while carefully avoiding its practice.

Academic freedom needs protection

Anwar also said academic staff should be able to express their views without government interference. This is perhaps the most important statement made at the forum, at least for me as an academic staff member.

But here, too, the real question comes afterwards. What happens when academics actually exercise that freedom? Academic freedom is easy to celebrate when academics say things that government, university management or society already finds acceptable. Its value appears when scholarship becomes inconvenient.

What I would urge is that protection must matter precisely when academic freedom becomes uncomfortable; when our research challenges policy, when our public commentary irritates ministers, or when our findings contradict official narratives. It must also extend to younger academics, who may not yet have the security, seniority or institutional standing to withstand retaliation.

And importantly, recognise that the threat to academic freedom does not come only from AUKU. It can come through disciplinary regulations, opaque promotion systems, contractual insecurity, internal pressure, event approvals, research restrictions and the quiet message that some subjects are simply “too sensitive”.

While we acknowledge that laws matter, in this case, the institutional habits matter just as much, or even more.

Let difficult conversations happen

There is one reform universities can begin right away without waiting for Parliament, that is, to allow difficult forums.

A university should begin from the assumption that an academic event can proceed, including when the subject is politically sensitive, unless there is a clear and defensible reason otherwise. Security and legal concerns can be dealt with without turning layers of approval and administrative procedure into a softer form of censorship.

If a forum must first become harmless before it is allowed onto campus, we have misunderstood what a university is. Twelve years ago, the institution tried to prevent Anwar from entering a student event. Yesterday, he stood inside the university telling us that intellectual freedom matters. That history should not merely be remembered. It should embarrass us into doing better.

Students may not appoint vice-chancellors, but who does?

Anwar was right to caution against reducing university democracy to students deciding who becomes a vice-chancellor or dean. But that cannot become an excuse to avoid the much more important question.

How are our university leaders actually chosen? Who defines the criteria? Who decides who is shortlisted? How much weight is given to academic credibility, leadership, integrity and the confidence of the university community? How insulated is the process from political preference? This is where reform must become more ambitious.

Students need not elect vice-chancellors. But students should have a voice, similarly for the academic staff. The criteria should be public and the search committees should command confidence. Conflicts of interest should also be disclosed, and the process should be transparent enough that people understand why one candidate was chosen over another.

A university cannot become autonomous if its most important appointments remain opaque. We should be careful not to abolish one mechanism of control while quietly preserving another.

Who writes the new law will shape the freedom it produces

Zambry said an independent committee has been established to gather and evaluate memoranda and views from academics and student representatives as the government considers a One Higher Education Act. He has also spoken of guaranteeing academic freedom, freedom of expression and student empowerment.

That is encouraging. But the composition of this committee matters enormously. Who sits on the committee? It cannot become an echo chamber of people already comfortable with the existing system. There must be students, academics across ranks and disciplines, university administrators, civil society, legal experts and independent voices, and more importantly, people who have themselves experienced restrictions on academic or student freedom.

Consultation is not meaningful because many people are invited to speak. It is meaningful when disagreement can actually alter the outcome.

Anwar asked students and stakeholders to give the government some space to undertake the repeal carefully. That is reasonable. But the process also has to be open enough for people to see who is shaping it, whose views are being heard and, importantly, whose are not.

AUKU can disappear while its mentality survives

This is what worries me most. We can repeal AUKU and still leave much of the old university culture untouched. We have lived with these habits for too long. I have said repeatedly that AUKU is only one part of the problem. The deeper issue is the culture it helped normalise.

Hence, Anwar’s return to UM offers a more demanding possibility. Once, the gate was closed on him. Now he has the political authority to help ensure that Malaysian universities stop building gates — legal, bureaucratic and psychological — around people who think differently. That would be a legacy worth claiming.

*Khoo Ying Hooi, PhD, is associate professor at Universiti Malaya. She is also co-founder and advisor of the Southeast Asian Coalition on Academic Freedom (SEACAF).

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.