Maliki Osman on academic freedom at autonomous universities

Singapore's autonomous universities (AUs) are "committed to safeguarding academic freedom" for their faculty and students, and academics "do not shy away" from politically sensitive topics such as domestic politics, race, religion and gender issues in their work, Second Minister for Education Maliki Osman told Parliament on Monday (Jan 10). He was responding to an MP’s question about a recently conducted survey on academic freedom in Singapore. Dr Maliki cautioned against generalising the findings as representative of all academics, given the low response rate and the fact that only a minority of respondents indicated significant concerns.