The quality of education in Singapore is considered among the best in the world, with their publicly funded universities having some of the highest global rankings. Yet there has been increasing concern about the impact of the government’s autocratic laws and policies on academic freedom. Academics have long argued that the country’s leadership has rendered universities less welcoming of research, teaching, and public engagement that could challenge the political status quo and have argued for academic freedom to be a parameter for ranking universities. Universities in Singapore are supposedly autonomous, but frequently are subjected to an opaque system of political vetting of personnel decisions, stymieing faculty self-governance. Freedom House assigned Singapore the lowest ranking (1 out of 4) with respect to academic freedom in their latest report.

 

In 2021 AcademiaSG published a survey which found academics in Singapore felt subjected to interference or were incentivized to self-censor at least occasionally. AcademiaSG was founded in 2019 as a collective of Singaporean academics in response to concerns regarding new censorship laws. The report found that one-third of the respondents had been told to modify or withdraw their research findings for administrative reasons. Foreign academics, as well as those working on ‘politically sensitive’ topics, were more likely to report constraints or inhibitions. Furthermore, the report found that gender was a more significant factor than tenure or citizenship status when it came to feeling constraint. Female academics consistently reported feeling less able to pursue specific projects, discuss sensitive issues in class, or engage the broader public than their male counterparts. The report was consistent with the findings from the global Academic Freedom Index (AFI), with Singapore rating closer to an authoritarian regime like Vietnam than to liberal democratic regimes like Taiwan, South Korea, or Japan.

 

The government of Singapore, which has been led by The People’s Action Party (PAP) since 1959, has been scrutinized by human rights organizations for constraining freedoms of expression, assembly, and association by weaponizing contempt and sedition laws, and the Public Order Act. In 2019, the government enacted The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), which gives broad discretionary powers to censor online content. In addition, in June of this year a long-discussed bill proposed a new law on the ‘Maintenance of Racial Harmony’ which was seen by the student organizations as giving the government the ability to indiscriminately clampdown on any activity that may be deemed to ‘threaten the racial harmony’ of Singapore. In a statement, the students claimed that the introduction of the bill would be detrimental to peaceful protests. Since students around the world were calling for the liberation of Palestine, the students in Singapore believed that they too had to rise to reject censorship and state repression. Students and alumni from various higher education institutions in Singapore were investigated for delivering a letter opposing the bill to the Minister of Home Affairs for potential violations of the draconian Public Order Act.

 

Universities in Singapore frequently cancel courses and events that may conflict with the government's ideology. In 2019, Yale-NUS, an academic institution run jointly by Yale University and the National University of Singapore since 2012, canceled a week-long course on ‘Modes of Dissent and Resistance in Singapore’ to mitigate risk for international students, breaking the law and incurring legal liabilities. The then Minister of Education One Ye Kung supported the scrapping of the course in the parliament. He stated, “Academic freedom cannot be carte blanche for anyone to misuse an academic institution for political advocacy, for this would undermine the institution's academic standards and public standing.”In a more recent incident, the National University of Singapore (NUS) rescinded its invitation to Sol Iglesias, an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, from participation in a panel titled “Public Intellectuals, Populism and Power: Perspectives from Southeast Asia” in November 2023. Iglesias planned to speak about academic freedom and public engagement in the Philippines. She was informed that “higher-ups” at NUS had rejected her participation as a speaker. Iglesias was told that the cancelation was related to her marriage to Dr. Thum Ping Tjin, a historian, democracy activist, and prominent critic of Singapore’s government.

 

In June of this year AcademiaSG submitted a document to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education. While acknowledging that there were more pressing attacks on academic freedom in the world, they requested that the Special Rapporteur not overlook subtler, stealthier ways in which academia is co-opted and captured by power. They argued that violations of academic freedom may occur without arrests, direct censorship, government takeovers, or physical attacks that make news headlines. These subtler encroachments on academic freedom often go under the radar, allowing such practices to continue without mitigation with far-reaching consequences.  

 

Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) is deeply concerned with the conditions of academics and the future of higher education in Singapore. ESW joins Scholars at Risk and AcademiaSG in calling attention to these threats of censorship, investigations, and arrests by the government of Singapore against scholars, students and other intellectuals. We urge all international organizations, academic and professional groups, and individuals who support human rights and academic freedom to speak out against the censorship and threats of arrest imposed on scholars and students in Singapore; and to call for the government to refrain from interfering with the autonomy of universities in Singapore.

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(Last updated October 15, 2024)

 

Please send appeals to the following: 

 

Ambassador Lui Tuck Yew

Embassy of the Republic of Singapore 

3501 International Place, NW
Washington, DC 20008
U.S.A.

Email: singemb_was@mfa.sg 

Website: https://www.mfa.gov.sg/washington 

 

Ambassador Burhan Gafoor 

Permanent Mission of the Republic of Singapore to the United Nations 

318 East 48th Street
New York, NY10017 

Phone: +1-212-826-0840

Website: https://www.mfa.gov.sg/newyork