For some academics, it's all about pushing the envelope

But that is only one side of the story.

On the other, a far larger number of university students would tell anybody willing to listen that “extremist professors” are stifling their freedom of thought with demands that they “share” their point of view.

A student at a university in Chiang Mai recently told her parents that she flunked a mid-term exam because her answer wasn’t “red” enough. The girl quickly became a “disciple” of the professor in question, either out of practical necessity or indoctrination, and hated “yellow” views with passion.

A student at a prestigious Bangkok university called his professor and asked her to talk to another academic who had locked himself up in his office for two days in protest against anti-corruption street rallies that sought to topple the Yingluck administration.

Impartial university professors must be shaking their heads at what some of their colleagues are doing these days.

“They call themselves ‘academics’, but I don’t know what they mean by that word,” said a professor at a top university in Bangkok. “In my opinion, they don’t view themselves as teachers who should care deeply about nurturing both the minds and spirits of their students, to instil good conscience and open-mindedness. They seem to take the role of ‘opinion leaders’ who possess an enormous sense of self-entitlement that knows no boundaries. 

“They don’t seem to care or understand that the role of a teacher is to encourage and enable the students to see the entire forest, not just the few trees that they select, and then demand subservience. These academics are vociferous and shrewd in using social media as their weapons. These days, if you can write provocatively in English, you suddenly get many foreign followers. Politicians sometimes tap these professional ‘opinion leaders’ to become their advisers. That’s another perk that comes with the territory. 

“Many of these academics grade their students not on the merit of objectively sound academic arguments, but on the basis of subjective personal favour. They want to clone their students, not to teach them.  The proselytised students look up to these academics as their idols.  Everything is about the academics themselves, and not much else. Respect for decency, norms and truth, have no place in what they do, how they conduct themselves.”

Another professor at another top-rank Bangkok university voiced a similar view. “It has become expected at my university that we should be radical in our views. A bunch of people here believe in pushing the envelope, irrespective of anything else. They are myopic, and proud of it.”

An illustration of this academic culture came with a recent article titled “Civil Discourse and Civil Society: The Dysfunctional Culture of Thai Academia”. Appearing in the Kyoto Review of South East Asia published by Kyoto University’s Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, the article was written by an author who claimed he had to use a pseudonym because he was teaching at a Thai university. It made for painful reading, even with the required suspension of disbelief. And the word “dysfunctional” seems an apt description for the thinking behind the writing. Truth be told, the pseudonym was not really necessary, as the writer’s identity is no secret. His trademark “let me enlighten you with my erudition” is a give-away.  

Many bona fide professors would not even consider the author an academic. But his voice is being heard in the international arena because he can write more effectively in English than many other otherwise more capable Thai professors.

Thailand bears an increasing resemblance to someone who has suffered a variety of physical and emotional traumas. We are a country in transition and convalescence. If there is anything we all can and must do, it is to maintain an open mind and work together with a common goal for a better future. 

We should also bear in mind that nothing comes without a context. Freedom of expression is in principle a basic human right, but it is not absolute. Earlier this month, two white men in the US state of Virginia were arrested by the FBI on charges of inciting racial hatred and violence. In Thailand, take a glance at the social media and the blogosphere and you will find comments so extreme they go beyond even what most would consider hate speech. And such expressions are tolerated and cultivated.

Rights must come with responsibilities. To place all the emphasis on the former and ignore the latter is a recipe for chaos and anarchy. People appear to have forgotten that if one invokes a right, he or she must accept a corresponding responsibility. 

We would be wise to heed the Seven Social Sins promulgated as a warning by Mahatma Gandhi in 1925. Prominent among them is an admonition against “knowledge without character”.  

However, the first has mushroomed with the help of new technology, while the latter is becoming irrelevant and – in some cases – extinct.