Chapter 3: An Academic Firmament Episode 5: The Crisis of 1985

1985 was a year of crisis, for the country, for USM and for me personally.  All crises are turning points.  The Chinese said crises are also moments of opportunity.  And Allah said in the Holy Koran, “Fa innamaal ‘usriyusraa. Innamaal ‘usriyusraa.” (94: 5-6).  (For verily, with every difficulty there is relief.  Verily, with every difficulty there is relief).  He said it twice. 

There was no indication of the oncoming crisis in early 1981.  When I came back from my sabbatical leave, I resumed my teaching, research and administrative duties as dean.  For the new academic year, I launched an introductory course for first year development studies, which I named “Negara Kaya, Negara Miskin” (a salute to Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame).  I had appointed Rajah Rasiah as the tutor for this course.   After graduation from USM, Rajah would go on to study for his PhD in Cambridge University, and launched a highly successful academic career in economics, focusing on development, innovation and new technology.  Now a professor of economics in University Malaya, he most recently won the 2014 Celso Furtado Prize for achievement in social science.  He collaborated with me to study the electronics industry in Penang, and together with Mei Ling, we wrote the “Local Conjuncture” paper on issues of MNC activity, technological adoption and labour relations in the semiconductor industry in 1983.  We presented this at Friedmann’s seminar on technology and labour in Los Angeles, which was billed as an activity of the IGU Study Group on Urbanization.   The seminar enabled me to meet with Eric Soja, an activist geographer in UCLA, Jeff Henderson a British academic now in Manchester, whom I collaborated in other academic sessions not least in Hong Kong, Salah El-Shaks, an Eqyptian-American urbanologist, and Saskia Sassen, a Dutch-American sociologist who worked on the mecciladaros of Mexico, in a similar setting to the electronic workers in Penang.

Besides consolidation of the development studies program, and conduct of the Household Economy summer course, I also was involved in initiating two research groups in the social science school. Mirroring the mecciladaros problem in Mexico, Chan Lean Heng asked me to sponsor and advice on an action research program on Young Workers Education in the Penang Free Trade Zone (FTZ) to educate them on worker rights and welfare, which placed the study on the opposite side of the PDC and the Frepanca group (an association of MNC reps in the Penang FTZ).  It was from here that Mei Ling and I wrote on “labour-shedding” in the MNCs that was presaging the mass retrenchments to follow in the coming economic recession of 1985.  The ILO seminar in which our paper was presented was held in New Delhi where I linked up with Manuel Castells who made important contributions to the critical philosophy of urbanism and the impact of the IT revolution and the internet on a “connected” (network) society, which we are now living through.

In addition, as an offshoot of the international conference on local-level development and households in 1980, I initiated with Wazir Karim a research unit on women and children named Unit Kanita with the sponsorship of Unicef, who also donated a van for the group’s outreach programme and fieldwork.  It also helped that Raj Karim was Wazir’s elder sister who was then head of the Women and Children division in the Health Ministry.

On the occasion of the Agung's visit to USM, 1983.
I was second from left, Sharom to the right of the Agong.

One day just about three years into my social science deanship, and only recently refreshed from my sabbatical leave,  late 1981, I received a call from Rahim Said, a sociology lecturer, to congratulate me only hinting but not telling me for what.  I only said something like “No-lah!” The next day Musa Mohammed called me to his office, to say I had been appointed to succeed him as DVC for academic affairs to serve under Tun Hamdan.  He was being recalled to his civil service post after being seconded to USM for two three-year terms.  Only then did I understand the reason why Musa only gave me three months and not the full nine months for my sabbatical leave.  I recommended to Tun Hamdan to appoint Wan Halim Othman, Micheal Swift’s student from Monash, to take my place as social science dean.  At the same time I was able to persuade another of Swift’s PhD student, Wan Ahmad Zawawi, an anthropologist to return home to join the school.   

Tun Hamdan was a father figure to me.  His old school charm but serious demeanor provided me the moral support and space I needed to perform my new job.  I first met him when he was still director general of education, when Rashidah was nominated as the first recipient representing USM for the first JAL Scholarships for Malaysian students to spend a semester in a Japanese university.  This was part of the Look East Policy initiated by Dr. Mahathir to compensate for Malaysia’s estrangement from Britain resulting from the “Buy British Last” campaign in retaliation to the hiking of UK university fees.

My first task was to formulate a new second 10-year plan to chart USM’s course going into the next decade from 1982.  It had been ten years since the Academic Planning Board under Hamzah Sendut’s leadership set out the plan for the growth of the university.   Through a series of consultations the new plan would build on what had been achieved under Hamzah.  Now under Hamdan, I outlined a plan of expansion and consolidation: on the science side, a new school of computer science was established by splitting it from the the original school of mathematics, together with creation of the  school of graduate studies (with KJ Ratnam as its first director).  The school of applied sciences was also planned to be split into a school of electronic engineering, while the rest of the applied science programmes would remain in the existing school.  New engineering schools were envisaged in structural, civil and chemical engineering, to be located in a second branch campus in Bandar Iskandar Perak, together with the new electronics engineering school.  The first was the medical branch campus in Kubang Krian, Kelantan.  Working with Roslani Abd. Majid, the dean and Saidi Hashim, his deputy for academic affairs, the medical school was already well on the way to establish an innovative integrated medical curriculum, with links to Flinders University in Adelaide Australia, and assisted by some world renown medical education specialists.  Two of them, Ron Harden and Ian Hart, together with Saidi, were to play crucial roles with me further down the road in establishing IMU.  In USM, one of the first trips I made overseas with the VC (and Saidi) was to Flinders to consolidate the medical school program.

On the occasion of Dr. Mahathir's visit in 1983.
Sharom Ahmat was on extreme left, I was third from right, and
 Roslani was on the extreme right.

Much of the expansion on the arts side were to be concentrated in the humanities  school, social science having gone through its own consolidation two years before when I first became dean; this had involved the development studies program and the introduction of the social development and administration (social work) programme.  There was a proposal incorporated into the new USM plan to establish a school of management by spinning off the existing management major in the school of social science.  On the arts side, the language unit was transformed into a school of languages and translation with Abdullah Hassan  now a professor as its director; the media unit into an educational technology and media centre; the culture centre upgraded to incorporate performing arts and fine arts; and the mass communications programme into a full-blown school of communications. Finally, the off-campus program gained in status and would be upgraded to a free-standing center for distance learning, with Dhanarajan as its head.  Danarajan would after I left the university take on a highly successful career in the late eighties launching the newly-formed Commonwealth Open Learning University in Ottowa.

The adoption of the USM Ten Year Plan 1983-1993 at the start of 1983  by the Senate enabled me now to begin a new recruitment program for academic staff under the ASTS/ASHES scheme.  Following similar exercises started by Musa during his term as DVC, and armed with the new plan, I made annual recruiting missions over the next three years with Maznah Saad, the hardworking deputy registrar in charge of personnel, to campuses in the US and UK where many Malaysian scholars were pursuing their studies.  Other universities were doing the same thing, so there was some kind of competition to recruit the best among the cohorts of scholars for the various fields.  The successful candidates became the critical mass of academic talent to power USM’s expansion plans.  In the first of these month-long US missions, I brought along at my own expense my elder son Anwar, who was ten years old at the time.  It was quite an educational trip for him, and a great time of father-son bonding.

But trouble was brewing on campus and beyond.  The rapid expansion of the university, not just in USM but throughout the university system as a result of pressures of politics and the quantitative targets of the NEP, began to put a strain on academia.  Students were still under duress due to continuing lack of reference materials in Bahasa Malaysia.  The language issue was also a hurdle for many non-Bahasa-proficient but talented staff for confirmation and promotion, and we lost many good prospects.   Then the manpower constraint began to seep into the quality of teaching and learning.  All these and the increasing bureaucratization of academia had begun to affect the morale of academic staff.

Beyond the campus, signs of economic stress were also emerging that my group captured during our briefings to the Economic Panel.  The country’s foreign debt began to enter dangerous territory, with the debt service ratio approaching 20%, while our foreign reserves were coming under pressure and the ringgit falling in value.   My group advised the government not to intervene just yet, but to ride the wave down.  But we didn’t anticipate the on-coming economic shock.

On campus, news around the middle of 1984 about Hamdan Tahir’s impending departure was unsettling for the academic staff.  Hamdan had told me while one day in the car returning from a meeting in KL that he had in his pocket a letter from the Agong appointing him to be the next Governor of Penang.  That was good news, but not for the university which had become quite used to his benevolent leadership and the accommodative atmosphere that he had created during his tenure as VC.  Campus talk swirled around who was to be his successor.  Shortly after, I received a call from Musa Mohammed and met him in a Subang hotel, where he asked me about the campus situation.  This was a normal thing because I had met him several times after his return to his pharmaceutical service job, when our conversations usually drift to what’s going on on campus.   There was however not any hint of his possible return to USM.

Musa’s appointment as the third vice-chancellor of USM was duly announced, taking up the job in October 1983.  The official farewell ceremony held at the Dewan Syed Putra when Tun Hamdan (he received his Tunship upon accession to the governorship) said goodbye to the whole campus, was a sad occasion for me, for I felt I was blooming as part of his administration.  But I was ready to welcome back Musa because, as friends I was involved in the lobby to put him up as DVC during his earlier stint, and the future remained optimistic.

Meanwhile, the economic situation continued to deteriorate over the following months.   In the same month of October 1983, the Bumiputera Malaysia Finance (BMF) scandal broke out; a subsidiary of the government-owned Bank Bumiputera, BMF suffered losses of RM2.5 billion through suspicious lending to the Carrian Group operating in the speculative Hong Kong property market.  Dr Mahathir had said that BBMB group’s lending practices in Hong Kong were a ‘heinous crime’.  On 25th September 1984, the Auditor-General Tan Sri Ahmad Noordin called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry, which was subsequently set up headed by him.  An Old Putera who was carrying out a forensic audit of the BMF books was found murdered in an orchard in Hong Kong.  At the start of 1985, as part of the restructuring of the parent banking group, Bank Bumiputera Malaysia received fresh injection of capital by Petronas, the national oil company; Basir Ismail, a member of the Economic Panel and previously chief executive of Johor SEDC was appointed the new Executive Chairman, and he asked me to join the bank’s newly reconstituted board as independent director and economist, to assist him in turning around the Bank. 

Then, commodity prices on world markets collapsed across the board during the rest of 1985, and the Malaysian economy, a major primary producer, experienced its first recession since Independence with the GDP growth rate reaching negative territory at -0.5% for the year.  At the same time, the semiconductor companies in the FTZs including Bayan Lepas were also experiencing a serious downturn from the year before.  Many companies were downsizing.  After nearly ten years with Hitachi Semiconductor, and successfully recruiting and managing the welfare of Hitachi’s expanding business and workforce in Malaysia including a new factory in Kulim, Kedah, in late 1984 Rose was recruited by Mostek, a Malaysian subsidiary of United Technologies to head its personnel department.  United Technologies was downsizing stateside and closing down its Malaysian operations.   Having seen the growth of the semiconductor companies and cohorts of rural mainly female workers bussed in from as far as Taiping and Perlis to the factories in Penang, she was now faced with supervising a retrenchment exercise of increasing proportion.  A true professional, she had been concerned about compensation issues, worker placement and welfare considerations.

I was personally placed in a major dilemma, having been actively supporting Lean Heng in her Young Workers Education project, and having similar concerns as well for the workers’ condition and welfare, and now have to choose sides.  Tensions in my household, with Anwar in the last leg of his primary education and Shafril Hadi in year one at the USM kindergarten, had been rising over the past two years, and now Rose had found herself involving in retrenching the electronic workers.  With the involvement of the unions, Lean Heng’s group, emboldened by the support of other NGOs like the Consumer Associationof Penang and Aliran, headed by its founder Chandra Muzaffar, were getting more confrontational with accusations of unfair compensation and treatment flying both in meetings with Freepanca and in the news media.  The retrenchment exercise was inevitable, but a cyclical phenomenon; we had however, entertained the suspicion that MNCs were taking advantage of the recession to implement the “labour-shedding” strategies we examined in the Local Conjuncture paper.

On campus, I did not anticipate what happened next.  One day in the middle of the third US trip on another recruitment mission with Maznah in the summer of 1985, I was informed by the deputy registrar that Amir Baharuddin Hussein, an agricultural economist and my deputy when I was dean of social science, and who continued in that post when I proposed Wan Halim Othman to take over the deanship after me, was promoted to the school’s most senior post to replace Wan Halim.  Being aware of national politics, of which campus politics was but a microcosm,  I was immediately attuned to the significance of that move by the Vice Chancellor.  But I was not aware of nor did I anticipate Musa’s move.  Neither was I consulted  on the changes he was about to make, which was his right and responsibility, to the university’s leadership structure.  Amir Baharuddin’s appointment was a sign, but I did not share my concern with the deputy registrar, nor mentioned what I thought I had to do next.  

The issue of academic excellence was always my chief concern in my career as an academic.  Many an afternoon I had tea with KJ at the staff association club by the university swimming pool, mutually lamenting on the challenges of maintaining academic quality, and the deteriorating standards of teaching and learning in universities, even in USM, leading to what I had then coined as “the closing of the circle of mediocrity” in the Malaysian academy.  We were not alone in these concerns; Sharom Ahmat had been tackling this issue as dean and DVC.  By some coincidence, upon my return from the US, he intimated that he may be leaving USM and seeking other greener pastures.   On the trip back from stateside I also found myself entertaining similar thoughts, especially with the appointment to the Bank Bumiputera board, on top of appointment to another corporate board, Cement Industries of Malaysia (CIMA), as independent director just after the Bank Bumi appointment, I had a good view of another life on the other side of academia.

Then I was called by the vice chancellor to inform me that he was planning to move me to the post of DVC for research and development.  Much as that was a lateral move, having come to the end of my first three-year term as deputy VC in charge of academic affairs, and the research lead not an unexciting prospect and challenge for me due to my abiding interest in research, I was however still disappointed at not being able to continue to supervise the academic plan for USM that I had started.  So, just as in the last days of my time in Monash when deciding to marry Rose, I made another precipitous personal decision to tender my resignation from the DVC academic post through a written twenty-four hour notice to Musa, and three months notice of resignation from the university to the Registrar.

When news of the resignations of Sharom and myself broke amongst the faculty, the academic staff association, led by Hashim Yaacob, my research colleague and sociologist, reacted badly and mounted a campus demonstration against the university administration reminiscent of the Baling demonstrations ten years before.   Our resignations were but a trigger to the mounting resentment at bureucratic control of academic life, progressive loss of academic freedom and declining standards.  Rose Ismail interviewed me for a feature article in the New Straits Times which spread the news further nationally.  Lim Kit Siang, the parliamentary opposition leader, calling on the Minister of Education then, Abdullah Badawi, to investigate and resolve what he saw as a crisis of confidence in USM, wrote saying: “Despite Datuk Musa Mohamed’s denials, it seems clear to me that the departure of two USM Deputy Vice Chancellors, Professor Sharom Ahmad (Research and Development) and Professor Kamal Salih (Academic Affairs) is because of their frustration at the absence of meaningful consultations in the running of the University administration… For instance, the allegation that the centralization of power in the Vice Chancellor has led to a patronage system whereby promotions are not based on academic excellence but favouritism is made for the first time in the history of Malaysia’s higher education.” At the farewell dinner given by the staff association, I noted almost injudiciously (thinking of my friend Musa) but fully held “that the rot in any organization begins like fish from the head”.  With that, I left USM.

Allah went on to say in the same surah quoted earlier:  “Therefore, when you are free (from your immediate task), still labour hard” (94: 7).   I was confident that He will provide, and that out of this academic firmament, a new life awaited me beyond USM.