IBTIKAR USIM | DISEMBER 2018

Then there will be interaction between you and them and then there are these words called co- learning and co-creating – it’s a buzz word today. In other words, it’s not you alone, but you create this with a group of people around you. So that this knowledge becomes a shared knowledge and this is part of the democratisation that you talk about. But if you don’t take the role of a public intellectual, then you are not feeding this to the world at large, then you do not get this interaction. That’s why to me, to write for the public is one of the things that you must do. Sadly, when you write for the public, they give you very little marks for this. You write and you educating millions of people through your writing, I find that’s more worthy than writing a highly specialised article and read by less than 50 people around the world. -tors to become researchers, because they are sitting on a gold mine of data. You got the data, all you need to is to analyse it and then you can come out with some conclusions of what these data is telling you. Q: Is there anything more that will make us a researcher? A: I think it’s a concern around us, that will be the research question. You go out and you don’t find something that you think it should be in our community now, you go out, the level of poverty’s ignorant is low, for example just take this question a 40 year old marrying an 11- year old, I’m sure it disturbs many of us. How do I argue with this ‘yes’ or ‘no’?. It doesn’t become an accepted norm, if it’s not right. It reflects the value that we hold. What is it that moves you? For me, we go to this whole idea of cult, the very basic understanding of what makes humans, human. This is what we are trying to promote. Alhamdulillah this has become an original piece of research, we are able to do this. But come back to the question that everybody must ask in USIM, from the chairman downwards. In fact, if I can say from the minister downward, but the minister too has been questioning this. Are we asking the right questions? If not what will be the solution? The minister in his first speech I attended had highlighted that he’s interested in the values of happiness, love and mutual respect, as compared to the previous minister talking about soaring upwards. And soaring upwards is basically the thing that we have been talking about – the KPIs, numbers. It is important but it has to be in the context of happiness, love and mutual respect. Q: What do you think about the democratisation of knowledge that we have, generally in USIM and Malaysia? A: Very poor. We still have this elitist thinking that we got and that’s why I encourage people to write. Writing is about sharing and democratising knowledge. For me, every academician must also be a public intellectual. Because then you have this responsibility of disseminating these information to people and also openly yourself up for criticisation - some people will write back ‘why are you writing nonsense’. 31 BULETIN PENYELIDIKAN DAN INOVASI