Kuala Lampur, Feb. 28 -- In Malaysian academia, neutrality is often presented as the gold standard of scholarly integrity. Public university lecturers and researchers are expected to navigate political discussions with detachment, avoiding any explicit ideological commitment. The official justification for this expectation is that universities should remain neutral spaces for knowledge production, free from partisan influence. Yet, in practice, this enforced neutrality does not necessarily foster genuine intellectual freedom. Instead, it can function as a means of political control, restricting free speech and suppressing critical inquiry.

The idea that scholars must remain "neutral" in political matters is paradoxical. Knowledge is neve...