The Struggle and Scientific Events

Allah does not require of any soul more than what it can afford. All good will be for its own benefit, and all evil will be to its own loss. ˹The believers pray,˺ “Our Lord! Do not punish us if we forget or make a mistake. Our Lord! Do not place a burden on us like the one you placed on those before us. Our Lord! Do not burden us with what we cannot bear. Pardon us, forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our ˹only˺ Guardian. So grant us victory over the disbelieving people.” (2: 286)

The above is a Qur'anic verse that we often recite. I put it here and am doing this post in order to balance out my last post that in a way degrades my own self. That's not how the story should end. So if one is not that good, what do we do about it? (A question that the late Prof. Twareque once asked me) One of the things that I did learn over the years studying abroad is that there is nothing intrinsically wrong about us. I have seen students in the places I have been, being good and bad. Some are of course gifted and some are not. When I realise I could be as good as the students abroad, maybe all the inferiority complex that we had experienced is illusory and are just cultural inhibitions. I have been also in situations where international researchers told me I might be wrong but as it turns out that I was right but of course there are also plenty of situations where I was wrong.

Another thing that is illusory is the thought that the scholars or students from the West had it easy. They struggle just like everyone else and they worked hard. I was fortunate to be able to bring my own students to workshops and conferences in NUS and NTU, just to have them see for themselves how others work. See pics below from various different occasions. Must thank Kwek, K.K. Phua and IAS for all these opportunities.

My fondest memory of these events over in IAS, is being able to participate in a forum with Nobel laureate David Gross, representing Malaysia. Below is a pic.

The lecture series that I have mentioned in this post, is another way to get students to experience how internationally renowned speakers work. By bringing this speakers here, more students get to experience to see how the way they think and work. Having a few of them together enable them to discuss theoretical matters 'live' before the students.

The important thing is to see how involved and stimulating the scientific culture that is displayed during these events. Their sessions are almost always full (unlike some of the local conferences that we see). Both organizers and speakers can be seen to be very committed in these scientific events. In my humble opinion, if we can do the same, we can progress as much as them. Some may say that we have a relatively shorter scientific tradition than some of the advanced countries (certainly not shorter than our southern neighbour). This is indeed true, which makes our tasks of elevating our scientific events much more important and pressing for us. The only thing that we have to be careful is not to spoil such events with 'business culture' with the aim of achieving KPIs. By doing so, most of the time, the scientific culture that we want to build gets destroyed. Over the last week or so, the social media has highlighted the problem of predatory journals. Let us not forget then, that there are dressed scientific events which are predatory too. Some people accused academics of going to conferences likening it as going for holidays but I rather say that making conferences as business events is much worse. I better end this here and let your imagination run wild.