On Friday, March 9, Singaporean journalism professor Cherian George published a blog post that basically alleged really curious academic practices on the part of the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Don't know who Cherian is? Read our interview with him here:

But back to his blog. Here's the skinny:

• In December 2017, Cherian was invited to speak on March 9 at NUS's Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (FASS) by a fellow professor based at NUS.
• He agreed, but the professor told him he needed to wait for approval from the university administration before he could proceed to book his flights to Singapore (Cherian is currently based in Hong Kong, teaching at the Hong Kong Baptist University).
• Months passed, no approval came. Until 3pm on the day the talk was supposed to be held.

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Now, some context needs to be added to these facts:

• Cherian said in mid-February that he was informed that “all visitors to the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences [FASS] are subject to screening”.
• Out of the universities in 25 countries he has previously spoken in, not once has an invitation to speak at an event been handled in this fashion.
• Nor, he adds, was he ever required to seek approval for any visitor he invited to speak to his students in his decade spent teaching at Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.
• He notes that he flew back to Singapore on multiple occasions to speak at events organised by the Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore Management University and even a couple of museums.

He added:

"The treatment I've just received is not typical."

NUS: It was an oversight

When we checked in with NUS about what happened, a spokesperson responded with a short comment on Wednesday morning saying:

“We regret that our internal administrative process took longer than expected due to an oversight, leading to this unfortunate incident. We have invited Dr Cherian George to give a talk later this month and he has accepted.”

We had asked them also about the screening process — when it was implemented and why a special one is needed for FASS in particular — as well as if they had responses to other assertions Cherian had made.

On Monday evening, Cherian had posted an update to his blog to reflect the same — that he had accepted NUS's belated invitation to travel down to deliver the talk accordingly:

"Monday 12 March: I’ve been re-invited and have agreed to speak at NUS later this month. I was in two minds about whether to say yes, in case it’s seen as accepting of a process that treats Singaporeans this way. But I don’t doubt my host’s sincerity in inviting me. And, I’d like to believe that collegiality still has a place in academia."

Here's a poster advertising the talk sent to FASS students:

Top photo via NUS FASS Facebook page

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