LETTER | I refer to the comment "Is our academia going 'kangkong'?" by Murale Pillai published on Malaysiakini today.

In my capacity as Gerak chair, as well as the daughter of the late Syed Hussein Alatas, who coined the term "professor kangkong", and whom Murale quoted, allow me to respectfully correct a gross error the author made.

First, please be very careful when writing or critiquing.

One must always be armed with empirical evidence, and while reading, utilise the powers of reason, organised critical thinking, causation, basic comprehension, and plain rigour.

Second, please re-read Gerak’s Sept 30 statement published on Malaysiakini “When professors ought to profess” about the minister’s comment on staying in one’s own lanes.

Furthermore, if you do re-read Gerak’s statement, I suggest you focus on the following paragraph:

“The more crucial matter for Gerak is the question of academic and university autonomy and taking responsibility.

“We believe that, whatever the minister’s motivations for his note of censure, the responsibility for taking action on errant academic staff must be that of the university authorities and the staff association.”

And Murale, if you proceed to read even further, Gerak also clearly states: “…the ‘lanes’ scholars move in can be many and varied.

“Knowledge acquisition and dissemination should never be about staying within particular and narrow lanes.

“After all, we constantly stress the need to be interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in our studies and research".

Applying intellectual rigour

As you can see, Gerak is an advocate of interdisciplinary knowledge and for scholars to be public intellectuals who concern themselves with matters other than their own narrow academic discipline.

We have clearly stated this in our recent media comment.

Third, if you’d like further evidence of the unique position taken by Gerak as a CSO/academic advocacy group which is concerned with how our universities are run, as well as the quality of academic and scholarly matters in the country, just do a quick search of the CVs of some of the office bearers in the Gerak exco, as well as many among our members.

Lastly, please correct your assertion that both Higher Education Minister Zambry Abdul Kadir and Gerak are “urging our professors to only speak on matters that are within their area of expertise”.

In this matter, it is very obvious that the views of Gerak and the minister differ.

The truth of the matter is, for Gerak, (and this point was not the concern of the minister’s) this issue is a much bigger and critical one.

It is about academics maintaining their credibility and applying intellectual rigour, irrespective of the lane, field or discipline that we move into.

The writer is Gerak chairperson.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.