Audience should have rebutted Gilley during talk, says Gerak

Education group Gerak has criticised the audience’s silence during US academic Bruce Gilley’s talk, which it said proved they were unable to put him in his place.

PETALING JAYA: US-based academic Bruce Gilley’s remarks at a Universiti Malaya (UM) talk last week should have been rebutted by the academics and students in attendance, the Malaysian Academic Movement (Gerak) said today.

It added that the affair could have been a more “value-added” episode had local professors and students who attended countered his offending remarks.

“His ideas should have been confronted by academics, creating a constructive space for purposeful dialogue as this is what normally happens at most university seminars around the world,” Gerak said in a statement.

The group also said it was appalled at the audience’s silence, which it said revealed that local academics are intellectually passive.

“They were unable to put him in his place, the lesson he deserved,” Gerak said, adding that it had been an opportunity to “teach” a foreign scholar like Gilley about ethics, and being mindful of slipshod, biased, and divisive scholarship.

Meanwhile, Gerak said UM had shown how local public university academics and administrators lack the initiative and rigour to properly vet a scholar before issuing an invitation.

Gilley sparked a backlash last Wednesday for claiming that Malaysia was pushing for a “second Holocaust against the Jewish people”.

Gilley, a professor of political science at Portland State University, was also said to have played down Malaysia’s ties with the US during the talk.

The academic left Malaysia on Thursday, citing safety concerns caused by an “Islamo-fascist mob whipped up by the government”.

He also launched a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe to cover travel and lodging expenses totalling US$2,346 (RM11,222) after declining reimbursement from UM “as a result of its disgraceful behaviour and that of the Malaysian government”.