Jeffrey Sachs Mentioned by UM VC yet again

It's the job of any university's VC to defend the reputation and stature of his or her university. It's also our responsibility as bloggers to call individual VCs out if we think what they've said does not make sense or is inaccurate. While defending UM's reputation, the UM VC Rafiah Salim, once again brought up the name of Professor Jeffrey Sachs in association with UM, as the first holder of the Royal Ungku Aziz chair in poverty studies.

I first brought this issue to attention in November 2006 here, expressing my great scepticism at whether this was a bona fide appointment and if it was, whether it was not just a great waste of money.

In this recent NST article, UM's VC Rafiah Salim had this to say about Jeffrey Sachs:

"At present, the person who is holding the Ungku Aziz chair is Jeffrey Sachs from the Earth Institute at University of Columbia. Now, mention his name to any economist and they will drop when they hear it."

The problem is, nobody outside UM or perhaps outside Malaysia seems to know that Sachs is actually holding this position. If you check the Earth's Institute's website here which lists Sachs' CV (and here in a 3 page pdf form), which has been updated as recently as March of 2007, there is no mention of Malaysia, UM or the Royal Ungku Aziz chair.

Among his many achievements listed:

Sachs is the recipient of many awards and honors, including membership in the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Society of Fellows, and the Fellows of the World Econometric Society. He has received honorary degrees from many universities including Trinity College Dublin, the College
of the Atlantic, Southern Methodist University, Simon Fraser University, McGill University, Southern New Hamphshire University, St. John’s University, Iona College, St. Gallen University in Switzerland, the Lingnan College of Hong Kong, and Varna Economics University in Bulgaria, and an honorary professorship at Universidad del Pacifico in Peru. Distinguished lecture series include the London School of Economics, Oxford University, Tel Aviv, Jakarta, Yale and many others. He was the 2005 recipient of the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice. He is a member of the Brookings Panel of Economists, the Board of Advisors of the Chinese Economists Society, among other organizations.

If honorary degrees are mentioned (and some from not so distinguished universities), why not the first holder of a fully endowed chair, especially one that is supposed to be as prestigious as the Royal Ungku Aziz Chair of Poverty Studies at the premier university in Malaysia, the University of Malaya?

I have no doubt that given the correct circumstances and incentives, Professor Sachs will eventually visit Malaysia (I think he's been to Malaysia before) and the UM to deliver a lecture or two but isn't it dishonest of UM's VC and indeed the PM (who first made the announcement) to associate him with UM before he himself has made any announcement that he has even accepted or is aware of this position being offered / given to him?

If Dr. Wee Ka Siong (BN-Ayer Hitam) or any of his staff is reading this post, I encourage him to raise this issue in parliament since making these kinds of inaccurate statements (and giving this information to the PM and asking him to make these statements) can come back to haunt us (remember the whole fiasco about why UM was ranked in the top 100 universities by THES?). More importantly, he should also enquire as to how the expenses associated with this endowed chair (RM20 million) is being spent.

And don't even get me started on the VC being proud of the fact that UM is ranked 13th among the top universities in the OIC.

To be fair to Rafiah Salim, she did bring up some achievements which I had not known about earlier including:

- UM's accounting degree is now recognised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
- UM’s architecture degree is one of three in the region recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. The others are from the Hong Kong University and the National University of Singapore.
- UM's engineering faculty had also been recently invited to be a part of the Asia-Oceanic Top Universities League on Engineering.
- UM has been invited to join the Asia Pacific Research University Organisation because it is doing so well.

Of course, these facts also need to be checked but if they are true (especially the first two), then these achievements are indeed positive ones.

In the meantime, we await the arrival of Professor Sachs to take up his position as the first holder of the Royal Ungku Aziz Chair of Poverty Studies (or for him to list it as part of his CV first).