Social sciences and humanities academies in the works

A Social Sciences and Humanities Academy will be established across all universities in Malaysia to bridge the gap between science and humanities, writes Sylvia Lool for the New Straits Times. Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said the academy would create a social and human sciences tradition in the post-colonial nation state.

"It also reduces our academic dependency on external intellectual traditions...Considering the social sciences and humanities was not indigenous but transplanted to Malaysia, it was not possible from the beginning for it to develop," Khaled said when opening the three-day World Engineering, Science and Technology Congress in Kuala Lumpur last week.

Khaled said the academy would pull together scholars from diverse disciplines, themes and areas, including from science, medicine and engineering, to look at addressing social and political problems faced by the nation. Public debates and policies, he said, must be informed by the integration of science and the humanities.
Full report on the New Straits Times site