MALAYSIA: Coercion will not aid student learning

Aerie Rahman31 August 2013 Issue No:285

 

When it was announced that the Islamic and Asian Civilisation Studies, or TITAS, course would be made compulsory to students in private universities in Malaysia, it provoked a huge controversy.

Public universities in Malaysia are already mandated to teach TITAS to all of their students. The move to extend this to private universities was contentious as private universities are considered to have more autonomy.

TITAS is a course that teaches about the Islamic, Malay, Indian, Chinese and Western civilisations – reflecting the ethnic configuration in Malaysia (except the Western part). The content is historical, talking about ‘how we got here’ – which is supposed to be covered in high school.

Surprisingly, certain opposition members such as the mercurial Rafizi Ramli, not only acquiesced but blatantly supported the move, citing the need for greater intercultural understanding in multi-ethnic Malaysia.

Ironically, most politicians who support the mandatory implementation of TITAS are those who studied in the West – where forced courses, other than the ones integral to a degree, are unheard of.

The TITAS debate is crucial because it represents to what extent the government is able to intervene in the workings of private tertiary institutions.

If the government is empowered to force private universities such as University of Nottingham’s Malaysia campus to compel all students – including foreign students – to do this course, it will erode the autonomy of private institutions and, perhaps even more importantly, of students.

Such a threat to student freedom would be unthinkable in any Western nation and would probably be met by street protests, just as when tuition fees were hiked in the UK. In quiescent Malaysia, it was met by lacklustre debates.

Without any public consultation, it appears that the obdurate Malaysian government has set the deal in stone.

A cosmetic solution

The glaring point about TITAS is that it is a smokescreen for the underlying, fundamental issues that beleaguer this nation. It is essential that we take a brief look at Malaysia’s structural problems.

Affirmative action policies benefiting the Bumiputera – sons of the soil, a term used to denote the Malay race and other indigenous peoples of South East Asia – still endure, despite being imposed since the 1970s, almost 40 years ago.

Racial inequality in terms of wealth is still pervasive. Vernacular schools – a bastion of segregation – are alive and well. The civil service is bloated with one ethnic group. Deserving secondary students are unscrupulously denied places in local universities by virtue of their ethnicity.

Against this backdrop, the implementation of TITAS is a mockery of all the ethnic problems that Malaysia is facing. What is taught in the classroom does not accord with lived reality.

Instead of trying to initiate a discourse on the problems that we have, we force students to feel they should embrace one another, while knives are still sticking in our backs. Real understanding only comes through trying to solve our structural issues.

A course that relies on compulsion for existence

When I was at law school at a public university in Malaysia, I had to undergo TITAS. The course lasted two hours every week and there was a written exam. Like any compulsory course, failure to pass meant you could not graduate. I hear that there will be no exam for the newly revamped TITAS. I hated the course, and still do – which is why I’m writing this article.

The problem with the course is not only the content, which plunges into essentialisms about the cultures of the ‘other’. I also loathed it because it destroyed any modicum of autonomy that I was supposed to have as a student.

I don’t mind if TITAS is introduced as an optional course, which a person who wishes to learn more about Islamic and Asian civilisations can take of his or her own volition. But forcing it upon students who are adults is akin to insulting our intelligence.

Let’s not start with the minimal utility that TITAS has to offer students. The primary reason why students attend universities is because they want to get a job. At university they accumulate the necessary skills to make them marketable. I have no idea how knowledge on Islamic and Asian civilisations would help one operate a Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

The argument that TITAS fosters greater intercultural understanding is, of course, made in good faith. Who doesn’t want a more harmonious Malaysia, where every ethnic group can live in peaceful coexistence?

However, as the timeless saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We must not only look at its aims, but also the means to that goal. In this case the means – compulsion – is undesirable.

I believe that when you start shoving things down people’s throats, you won’t achieve the goal that you desire. In fact, the inverse is true. University students aren’t stupid and won’t trot along unquestioningly like sheep being guided by a shepherd.

In Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of resistance, James Scott postulated that the subordinates (peasants) won’t fully accept what the dominants (bourgeoisie) feeds them. Students won’t take kindly to being forced to attend a course that they didn’t choose. They’ll resist in subtle ways.

People will drag their feet to the dreaded TITAS class. Students will trivialise and ridicule the subject. In order to pass the time in class, while bored, students won’t pay attention and take proper account of what is being taught to them. This will only mean that the subject itself is devalued and seen as inferior by students.

I know I did that.

Formally, for sure, the government will be able to record that 100% of students are learning TITAS. But the number of people internalising what they learn will be minimal. Even those who have taken it in, will only have done so to pass the exam and when that’s over, they will forget about it. There’s no incentive to follow up on what you learn so what you learn is eroded over time.

Forcing people to study something is like treating university students as if they’re children. Please. The fact is, we need to accord students a certain degree of respect and let them choose what they want to learn.

Quo vadis, Malaysia?

I firmly believe that the state should only play a supervisory role and not an authoritarian one in society. Sincere understanding comes from a bottom-up and not a top-down approach. Campaigns, optional courses and inter-ethnic dialogues are catalysts to greater understanding. Not compulsion.

Universities in the West are doing well in the world rankings precisely because they are given the freedom to teach what they believe is best for their students. It is little wonder that there are no universities in Malaysia that have ever reached the top 50 in world rankings.

University can be the best time of any individual’s life. Don’t mar that by disrespecting the choices that they want to make.

* Aerie Rahman is pursuing an MA in social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS, and was formerly a law student at Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia

'Mooc' makes Oxford online dictionary

28 August 2013 | By Chris Parr

The acronym Mooc has made the Oxford Dictionaries Online – a web-based lexicon of current English by the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary

Defined as “a course of study made available over the Internet without charge to a very large number of people”, the word Mooc has become commonplace in academia over the last 18 months, after many higher education institutions began offering such courses.

The phrase can be traced back to 2008, when a group of Canadian scholars developed a course called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, which was delivered to more than 2,000 online students.

However, it was in late 2011 when the Stanford University Mooc “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” attracted around 160,000 enrolments that massive open online courses became more widely known.

Angus Stevenson, head of dictionary projects at Oxford Dictionaries, said: “New words, senses, and phrases are added when we have gathered enough independent evidence from a range of sources to be confident that they have widespread currency in English.”

Mooc is not the only education-related word to be making its debut in the online dictionary. BYOD, an abbreviation of “bring your own device” has also been added. It refers to the practice of people using their own computers, smartphones, or other devices for work purposes, and is increasingly being used in universities, with lecturers encouraging students to use their own gadgets during class.

Each month, Oxford Dictionaries adds around 150 million words to its central database of English usage examples, and approximately 1,000 of these are added to Oxford Dictionaries Online each year.

chris.parr@tsleducation.com

UNITED STATES: Online lecture prompts legal fight on copyright

The Boston Globe31 August 2013 Issue No:285

 

Famed Harvard legal professor Lawrence Lessig may be the last guy you would want to pick a fight with over copyright issues over the internet, writes Michael B Farrell for The Boston Globe.

But that is exactly what Australian record company Liberation Music did when it threatened to sue Lessig, a leading scholar of internet law and an advocate for fewer copyright restrictions, for allegedly violating its rights by using music from the hit song “Lisztomania”, by French pop band Phoenix, during a lecture.

Liberation Music claimed to own the licence for the 2009 song, which became so popular that fans, college students, and choruses from around the world made their own dance videos to the music and posted them on YouTube, creating something of a global internet phenomenon. Lessig used the phenomenon and excerpts from the dance videos in a 2010 lecture that he recorded and also posted to YouTube, prompting the legal warning from Liberation Music. Now, Lessig is fighting back with his own legal action.
Full report on The Boston Globe site 

AUSTRALIA: In the court of academia

Paul De Frijters31 August 2013 Issue No:285

 

One of the stranger beasts to emerge from education reform in recent decades has been the Australian university. Although there are still about 38 of them left in the wild, they are nevertheless endangered.

Indeed, their survival is threatened by self-harm – which can extend as far as their taking the axe to perfectly healthy faculties and schools within their domain; for instance, the axing of the arts faculty at the Queensland University of Technology, whose underlying budget at the time was in the black, and where its many students were transferred to other faculties with otherwise low numbers; or the move of the school of economics at the University of Sydney from the business faculty to the arts faculty.

Both happened against the express wishes of the schools, faculties and general academic opinion. What are we to think about these social organisms? Do they operate like a business, where the threat of bankruptcy and competition keeps the hierarchy in check and determines their wages? Or are they ministries, answerable to politicians?

The truth, alas, is that Australian universities resemble neither firms nor ministries. In fact, they operate more like the old royal courts of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Like its counterparts of old, the Australian university has a king. Although these kings have far more power than their North American and European kinsmen, they spend most of their time securing their power base and the compliance of their liegemen, and so have little time to really understand what most of the underlings are doing.

To save himself this trouble, the king surrounds himself with a court of high-level administrators, whose role it is to vie for access to the royal presence and whisper in his ear the things he wants to hear, always with a view to strengthening their own positions within the realm.

The king and his earls and counts receive petitioners from the outer reaches of the realm where production takes place. These petitioners usually come to beg for a share of the kingdom’s resources: administrators seeking finance to subsidise their latest ventures; academics petitioning for positions; and students seeking help in their fights with other students and academics.

The regal council has the power to pass judgement on these minor squabbles, granting or withholding favours in a manner that keeps everyone hopeful and in line without bankrupting the court.

Money

The economy of the royal domains is quite intricate: on the one hand, the money stream on which the court floats comes from local student numbers determined by the broader imperial bureaucracies, within which each of the constituent educational mini-kingdoms sits.

However, so parsimonious have the imperial bureaucracies become that the kingdom is increasingly dependent on another source of income – that produced by a rising tide of international students who come to learn English and perhaps procure a visa that will give them future access to the realm’s riches.

The fees to be paid for this privilege are high and to ensure the continued flow of these funds, ambassadors are sent to foreign lands to establish ties with other courts, to their mutual benefit.

Nevertheless, the Courts of Academe must also ensure that they remain on good terms with the domestic bureaucracies that are directly responsible for the money flows – the departments deciding on HECS [student loans] places, accreditation, research funds and special state interests such as defence or agriculture from which there is potential money to be had.

This is an intricate and delicate game that entails singing a recurring refrain of being ‘starved for cash’ while, at the same time, having pretensions to be ‘world-beating’.

In addition to their principal sources of income, the courts need to keep an eye on the general levies imposed on all activities within the realm. Anyone making any money in the realm is taxed to give the king his due.

Many of these money-generating activities, though, are hidden, so the king finds himself in a murky legal area having to grapple with the arcana of patent laws, intellectual property rights, definitions of ‘consultancy’ and other legally pliable distinctions between university and residential property.

The king is forever having to deal with troublesome academics who hide their ‘IP’ from him, property developers who want to build something in the realm (and with whom deals can be made), internal accountants who ensure that the individual territories (known as ‘faculties’) pay their dues, and lawyers brought in to protect him from outside forces.

Self-serving nobility

A recurring characteristic of this royal court system is the self-serving behaviour of all its nobility. The various dukes, earls and barons forever endeavour to pay less to the king than is due from their individual fiefdoms, abusing the loopholes that the central tax-gatherers have left open. They also try to pinch business from one another by advertising their wares among commoners (‘students’) in a bid to lure them to their particular faculties.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the central court bureaucracy is a similarly peculiar creature. It comprises men (and the occasional woman) of ambition, who build their own little empires using the argument that activities are best organised centrally because of the famed (though infrequently sighted) ‘synergies’ and ‘network externalities’ that can be brought to bear by doing so.

They preside over burgeoning bureaucracies that vie with the other bureaucracies for roles and resources, the golden rule of their employment being to shore up their own universities as interests while promoting the ambitions of their masters.

The time-honoured and celebrated ‘suck up, kick down’ principle is innate in the culture of the royal courts. Another noteworthy aspect of these royal courts is their penchant for luxury items and pageantry. This love of pageantry is evident even in the outer halls, where attractive secretaries ensure that all visitors have to wait before their arrival is announced with the fanfare that is due their rank.

The royalty enjoys huge personal working and reception rooms with expensive paintings; executive yachts; CEO retreats; and other displays of wealth. These visible ornaments to their prestige are boosted by the celebrated academics they are able to attract to the realm, and are another principal means by which kings try to outdo one another.

The celebrity professors can be a bit noisy and self-centred, but their employers have learned that this is the nature of this particular ornament and that there are enough of them in the world to ensure that the more irksome specimens can be replaced easily enough.

Now and then, of course, the king must be seen by his subjects and allow for grievances (though none pertaining to his royal person) to be brought before him. To this end, he occasionally travels to the outer reaches of the realm, delivering lofty speeches and inviting selected academics to ask him anodyne questions of no significance, and ignoring the occasional outcry of disgruntled subjects.

The pinnacle of such events is the ‘strategic retreat’, a once-a-year event in which the top 200 bureaucrats and academics are invited to come and pay their respects to the king in a series of private audiences wherein due deference can be shown and favours can be asked.

What is not commonly understood about these royal courts, particularly by those outside the palace gates, is that the royal court itself is a snake-pit – where the barons eye and vie with one another for the top spots, particularly the throne itself.

The king and his closest advisors are thus forever watching their backs for ambitious court members seeking to unseat them through adverse media coverage or accusations of wrongdoing.

Paranoia is never too far beneath the highly polished surfaced: potentially, these confidantes and close advisors present the greatest threat to the throne and he must always keep an eye open for any sign of disloyalty, treachery or overweening ambition.

Distraction

Another imperative not commonly understood is the need of the king to keep everyone – knights, earls and commoners alike – busy by focusing on projects and ‘strategic visions’. There must be an infinite succession of visions and plans that involve as many of the potential lower-order troublemakers (academics and top bureaucrats) as possible.

Assurance of learning programmes, research excellence drives, teaching evaluations, equity programmes and the like are all designed to engage the underlings in activities that reinforce loyalty. They give the royal bureaucracy a common goal and a common enemy as they measure and bully the truly independent potential troublemakers: the academics.

What is not widely understood is that the potential troublemakers lower down – academics – are generally harmless creatures, quite oblivious to what is going on around them. For the most part, they keep their noses out of the big fights, concentrating instead on their own little battles with their peers, scrapping for scarce resources.

They find pride and self-esteem in their lecturing and latest research programmes, forever congratulating themselves on their achievements and manoeuvrings. As long as they don’t truly challenge royalty, they are tolerated. Occasionally, when some of the more politically savvy (or greedy) present a problem to the court, they can always be assimilated into the ranks of the royals.

Resources

What is commonly understood, though, is that royal courts grab as many resources as they can. The university senates, which are nominally sovereign, comprise people closely aligned to the court, and invariably include no more than one academic.

The royal stipends (a system of huge salaries and bonuses) are similarly organised as an agreement between the constituent members of the royal court: the one thing they can invariably agree on is how deserving they are of the court’s largesse. One upshot is that kings (and their accommodating bureaucratic underlings) are rewarded with immense salaries.

The main danger that the royals face, apart from each other, is the outside media. Since the royal realms are not self-sufficient and exist by the grace of the imperial bureaucracies, it is in their best interests to ensure that the imperial bureaucracy is not alerted to any problems within the realm.

Thus, the king and nobles are devoted to the maintenance of good relations towards the outside world, particularly the media. There is therefore an extreme aversion to bad press. To ensure that nothing untoward reaches the wrong ears, the university’s public image is very tightly controlled. What is true of the empire’s constituent kingdoms is also true of the empire.

The ultimate aim of all is to protect themselves from their rivals while seeking to expand into the territories of others. To this end, there is a perennial stream of initiatives to prevent losses and initiate expansion.

The battleground includes research assessment exercises, new laws on student loans, new rules on delineations between disciplines, and new pots of money for particular purposes – ‘research priorities’. This squares the circle and means that in any individual realm even the well-meaning realise they really do need a king to do their bidding in these territorial disputes.

* Paul De Frijters is with the University of Queensland: email: p.frijters@uq.edu.au. This article was first published as “Universities as Royal Courts: A fable” by the Australian National University.

MALAYSIA: Medical school opens branch campus in London

Emilia Tan31 August 2013 Issue No:285

 

A private medical school in Malaysia, Allianze University College of Medical Sciences or AUCMS, is to expand to Europe with the purchase of a major university site in London.

The 32-hectare park and buildings, which previously housed Middlesex University’s Trent Park campus, attracted international attention when it was acquired by AUCMS for £30 million (US$46.5 million) this year.

It was put up for sale last year after Middlesex University moved all its operations to a single site in Hendon, North London.

The site comes complete with a lake and nine buildings, including student accommodation, dining halls and lecture theatres.

A further £10 million to £20 million is expected to be spent on renovations – a historic protected building, Mansion House, sits on the site. But some facilities need little work, with amenities and equipment already in place.

Around 300 students are expected to be on campus by October.

AUCMS, based in Penang, has five specialist medical schools and around 3,500 students. It has also been expanding into business studies, accounting and hospitality.

While it aims to secure accreditation as a British university in order to be able to enrol British students, for the time being existing AUCMS students from Malaysia will spend time there.

In August, a UK private non-profit institution, the University of Buckingham, became the first private university in the country to be authorised to offer medical degrees. It will be allowed to exceed strict quotas imposed on public universities by the authorities in England on the number of international students who may be enrolled for medical degrees.

For a private university to grant medical degrees in the UK is an uphill struggle. The General Medical Council, or GMC, must still approve the University of Buckingham course which, according to reports from London, is likely to adopt an Australian curriculum.

The UK government has also tightened its system of accrediting overseas institutions wanting to set up in England.

AUCMS has been offering a medical degree in Malaysia, in collaboration with Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and one in conjunction with Indonesia’s Universitas Sumatera Utara. It is planning to build two hospitals in Penang by 2015.

The university has been trying to attract more foreign students to its Malaysian campus, mainly from Indonesia, Thailand and the Middle East.

AUCMS Chair Zainuddin Md Wazir said earlier: “With this campus we hope to expand our educational programmes, not only to our students in Malaysia, but also to international students.

"However, in the initial stages, we will have a credit transfer programme so our students in Malaysia will have opportunities to study here for three to six months in another environment. This will enable them to enjoy a totally different experience and will give them further exposure under the guidance of foreign experts.”

He said the university also has plans to expand in South East Asia – including in Cambodia and Laos – and in Central Asia.

Another private institution, Limkokwing University of Creative Technology, was the first Malaysian university to set up a London campus in 2007. Limkokwing has branch campuses in Bali, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, China and Cambodia.

NORTH KOREA: Dictator’s grandson heads to top French university

Yojana Sharma28 August 2013 Issue No:285

A spokesperson for Paris' elite Institute of Political Studies, Sciences Po, has confirmed that Kim Han-sol – grandson of the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il – will begin classes at its Le Havre campus this September, after French news reports revealed that he would join the three-year Europe-Asia undergraduate programme taught in English.

Kim Han-sol is the son of Kim Jong-il's eldest son Jong-nam and the nephew of current leader Kim Jong-un. The family is said to be based in the Chinese territory of Macau.

The news comes as reports emerged from North Korea that the current leadership is attempting to limit ‘special admissions’ to the country’s top universities for the children of senior officials.

According to South Korean sources it is a ‘populist’ move by Kim Jong-un aimed at increasing his standing among ordinary people.

Insiders said that more children of North Korean elites were applying to universities outside the country, particularly in China – mainly for short programmes – and in Hong Kong due to the tightening of rules for top-tier North Korean universities.

But Han-sol is widely recognised as a special case as he is already living and studying overseas.

Hong Kong in 2011 denied Han-sol a visa after he had been accepted at Li Po Chun United World College, a residential college for 16- to 19-year-olds. He joined the Bosnia-Herzegovina branch of United World College in Mostar instead, graduating this year. He is fluent in English.

Han-sol’s educational opportunities are in strong contrast to those of even higher-level cadres in Pyongyang.

According to a report in March this year by Daily NK, a website on North Korea run from Seoul, quoting a Pyongyang source, new orders were recently handed down by Kim Jong-un placing a limit on the number of children from the Central Party secretariat list entering top Pyongyang universities.

Despite complaints from the elite, it has now become more difficult for party cadres, even if they have money and power, to get their children into a top local university unless they have talent. There have been suggestions in the past that rich cadres have ‘bought’ places for their offspring at top North Korean institutions.

Children of ordinary workers and families from rural regions should have more opportunity to get into good universities. Previously even the most talented children struggled to get into a good institution, as children of loyal elite families were given priority, according to Daily NK.

North Korea’s top universities are considered to be Kim Il-sung University, Kim Chaek University of Technology, the International Relations University and Kim Hyong Jik College of Education in Pyongyang.

Top universities in the capital were intended to train top party officials, with technical training coming second place.

A North Korean refugee Kang Ji-hoon, who graduated from Kim Il-sung University, told New Focus International, a news site that gathers information from North Korean refugees, earlier this year: “The pride that we felt about having attended a top-tier university was not so much based on having achieved something of our own accord, but rather, pride at having parents from a certain political class.”

The majority of major figures in the party and state apparatus under Kim Jong-un are graduates of Kim Il-sung University, according to new research carried out in South Korea.

The analysis of 106 high officials under Kim Jong-un, released last year by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, found that 35.5% graduated from Kim Il-sung University, with a further 17.7% studying at Kim Il-sung Military University and 9.7% at Kim Chaek University of Technology.

Mass Demonstration or Violent Crackdown—Lose-Lose for All

By The Cambodia Daily - August 14, 2013

By Kimly Ngoun

This opinion is apolitical. I write out of concern for the Cambodian people and the country.

The news of a possible opposition CNRP-led mass demonstration and the CPP’s response to deploy armed forces and ar­mored personnel carriers (APCs) in and around Phnom Penh looks like both political camps are heading toward confrontation. 

Even more worrisome are the contradictory statements from within the CNRP and the ruling party about their respective intentions. If a mass demonstration takes place and the government reacts with force, both political parties and the country as a whole will lose.

If there is a mass protest, the big question for the CNRP is how to keep it peaceful? How can it guarantee control over every protesters’ movement, gestures and words? Any provocative move or slogan from a few demonstrators may invite a response from the armed forces with the potential to inflame chaos and violence. If such a scenario were to occur, the CNRP’s leaders would be held, if not legally, morally responsible for casualties and loss of lives.

The CNRP will surely disappoint many of its supporters who voted for “change,” but change in a sense for a more peaceful, prosperous, just and civilized nation, not a change to violence, tragedy and backwardness.

If the CPP uses force to suppress demonstrators, it faces three major risks. Firstly, the party’s leaders may be liable to prosecution by either local or international courts. Secondly, if the violent crackdown fails to scare people away and reduce the number of demonstrators but instead inspires more people to take to the streets, this could spillover to other provinces throughout the country.

Some of the CPP’s officials and members of the military and the police (especially those mid-level and low-ranking officers) will have to ask themselves the question—should I stay or should I go? Any defection by members of the ruling party and the military will greatly damage the government’s legitimacy; affect the psychology of those who stay and possibly provide an excuse for foreign countries to intervene militarily.

If there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people joining the demonstration, it would not be surprising for the soldiers and police to find their friends and relatives among the protesters.

Thirdly, violent action will tarnish the ruling party’s image as the guardian of peace and political stability.

History has informed us that negotiation and settling of disputes by peaceful means is the door to lasting peace and social harmony. Violent means cause revenge and tragedy.

Cambodian voters regardless of political tendencies value peace, social harmony and the country’s prosperity. And they have already fulfilled their obligation as a good citizen by voting.

Now it is the turn of the leaders of both parties to demonstrate that they truly care about: the people and the country. The world is watching Cambodia. Let us prove that we are a civilized race and a responsible world citizen by resolving the standoff peacefully.

Kimly Ngoun is a postgraduate student at the Australian National University, Canberra.

© 2013, The Cambodia Daily. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in print, electronically, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission.

An Arab-Style ‘Cambodian Spring’ Could be Disastrous

By The Cambodia Daily - August 19, 2013

By Samir Pheng

Following the recent election results, a new concept is starting to bloom: the Cambodian Spring. Although filled with optimism, the idea of transposing the Arab Spring to Cambodia should be taken with a pinch of salt. 

In December 2010, “flowers” blossomed in the harsh Mediter­ranean sun of Tunisia then Egypt followed by Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria and many Arab countries soon after. Arabs followed the mesmerizing songs of change and democracy trusting they would soon lead to a better life. As curious as Pandora opening a forbidden box bestowed by Zeus, the people expected democracy to become a panacea for all their troubles. In the heat of the moment Mohamed Bouazizi’s immolation kickstarted the revolution and everyone took to the street.

French political scientist Mi­chel Dobry speaks of desectorialization in Egypt meaning that workers of every sector converged their frustrations into a massive protest movement. Like a B-rated Hollywood movie, the bad guy (the long standing dictators) lost to the good guys played by Democracy. Hap­py endings and let’s grab a beer anyone? As much as I wished this story to be true, reality shows a much grimmer and more violent face.

Tunisia has failed to recover from former President Ben Ali’s fall and the political situation has been unstable since. Unemployment rates have risen as the fragile state has been unable to establish a solid economic structure. As a result, foreign investors are reluctant to set foot in a country with a weak legal and political framework. And Tunisia is probably the one country from the Arab uprisings with glimmers of hope.

Egypt initially placed its optimism in the figure of President Mohamed Morsi but he has failed to negotiate a peace agreement with the military. To his own detriment, one might say after the latter seized and imprisoned him. The inability to create a stable political climate has many economical consequences. Vice Minister of Finance Hary Kadri Dimian is still not able to broker a loan agreement with the International Mon­etary Fund. Wheat reserve is at its lowest point since importation has slowed considerably meaning Egypt could face another food riot. Evaporating investments, scared tourists: A once attractive country with its gold sands and mighty pyramids has become the scene of gruesome showdowns.

Libya and Syria? What can be said? One has become a haven for radical Islamists looking to restore Shariah law while the other sees President Bashar al-Assad sharpening his meat cleavers every day. He might fall one day but chances are the butchering will not stop there. Overzealous partisans of democracy like to put in the limelight the inevitable democratic transitions whenever they see a glimpse of change. But what follows is not always rainbows and butterflies.

The way we instill change can either mean: Establishing legitimate democratic institutions recognized not only by the West but also the people and its leaders. Or, destroying existing structures to establish newer, untested ones.

Every government has its flaws but it is through constant institutional confrontations, negotiations and eventual compromise that change should be brought about. The nature of change whether it is through peace or violence also dictates the nature of the outcome.

A Cambodian Spring—Arab style—could produce irreversible consequences. Our country should not make another dreadful copy of a Western song, especially one that sold so badly in Arab countries.

Samir Pheng is a graduate student at Sciences Po Bordeaux.

© 2013, The Cambodia Daily. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in print, electronically, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission.

Top 40 Potential Viva Questions

By Rebecca
Source: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/ResearchEssentials/?p=156

I submitted my thesis way back in March but, somewhere between CREET and the Research School, the documentation was lost or abandoned for a couple of months. Add to that a spell in hospital when they finally got round to fixing a date – and I’m left with a viva in late August, when my thesis is fast becoming a distant memory and I’m on the mend from major surgery.

Of course, successfully completing a viva affects all sorts of things: employment prospects, roles I can take on at the university, status, pay – and I could have done without lying in intensive care worrying about the event itself. Someone, somewhere at the university has messed things up big time – not that they are apologising for it, or even owning up.

But, apart from awarding the unknown culprit(s) a #massivefail hashtag, I’m thinking positive and working on possible viva questions. I’ve been setn, or read, several lists of these – so here they are, my selection of the Top 40 Potential Viva Questions.

1. Can you start by summarising your thesis?
2. Now, can you summarise it in one sentence?
3. What is the idea that binds your thesis together?
4. What motivated and inspired you to carry out this research?
5. What are the main issues and debates in this subject area?
6. Which of these does your research address?
7. Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?
8. Who has had the strongest influence in the development of your subject area in theory and practice?
9. Which are the three most important papers that relate to your thesis?
10. What published work is closest to yours? How is your work different?
11. What do you know about the history of [insert something relevant]?
12. How does your work relate to [insert something relevant]?
13. What are the most recent major developments in your area?
14. How did your research questions emerge?
15. What were the crucial research decisions you made?
16. Why did you use this research methodology? What did you gain from it?
17. What were the alternatives to this methodology?
18. What would you have gained by using another approach?
19. How did you deal with the ethical implications of your work?
20. How has your view of your research topic changed?
21. How have you evaluated your work?
22. How do you know that your findings are correct?
23. What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?
24. What would have improved your work?
25. To what extent do your contributions generalise?
26. Who will be most interested in your work?
27. What is the relevance of your work to other researchers?
28. What is the relevance of your work to practitioners?
29. Which aspects of your work do you intend to publish – and where?
30. Summarise your key findings.
31. Which of these findings are the most interesting to you? Why?
32. How do your findings relate to literature in your field?
33. What are the contributions to knowledge of your thesis?
34. How long-term are these contributions?
35. What are the main achievements of your research?
36. What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD?
37. What advice would you give to a research student entering this area?
38. You propose future research. How would you start this?
39. What would be the difficulties?
40. And, finally… What have you done that merits a PhD?

Rebecca
Addendum: Rebecca successfully defended her thesis on 21st August. I’ve posted up this pic I took on the day, but I expect when she’s back from her hols she’ll move it to another post. Gill