Khairuddin Aljunied is Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore and Senior Fellow at Georgetown University, United States. - Khairudinaljunied.wordpress.com pic, May 1, 2026
You can be as well-read as Aljunied and still miss the wood for the trees – Terence Netto
Associate Professor Khairuddin Aljunied says education in the humanities is becoming obsolete because of the pervasiveness of AI, but that is no reason to consign the humanities to a back-burner
Updated 10 hours ago
1 May, 2026
8:27 AM MYT
Khairuddin Aljunied is a fluent-speaking academic who these days is often on social media.
He possesses the credentials for being a ubiquitous presence on the social media circuit.
Aljunied is Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore and Senior Fellow at Georgetown University, USA.
An expert in the study of Islam in Southeast Asia, Aljunied is author and editor of 14 books, three of which alone were published in 2023.
This explains his prolificity as author.
Hence it was a jolt when he told a Ilmuwan Malaysia Madani forum titled “Muslim Unity in Times of Geopolitical Crisis” that several disciplines, especially in the humanities, would soon be obsolete.
According to Aljunied, the escalating presence of AI will consign the humanities and its study to obsolescence.
It is an opinion that portrays Aljunied as an academic who sees universities becoming factories for the production of utilitarian knowledge only.
If you read Aljunied’s book, Malaysia’s Forgotten Struggles for Freedom, a title published by an American university in 2015 and reprinted in Malaysia in 2024, you will glimpse a refutation of his prediction in the work’s first chapter.
It begins with an excerpt from freedom fighter Mustapha Hussain’s book, Malay Nationalism before Umno.
Mustapha belonged to the cohort of left wingers among the Malay intelligentsia who strove, from the decades before the Second World War and leading up to Merdeka, to free Malaya from British rule.
The excerpt describes stirrings in the author’s heart as he observed his people’s poverty, intimations that set his mind to free his people from colonial exploitation to gain the independence that would bring prosperity.
In Mustapha’s telling, the promptings originated in his reading of the exploits of Robin Hood and of stories of the French Revolution which saw the overthrow of a corrupt and oppressive monarchy.
These inspirational themes Mustapha, who was educated in English language schools, gleaned from books he read while in school. They touched him to the quick.
No doubt, Aljunied, surveying the AI-driven tide of new technologies rapidly coming onstream, is tempted to forget that education is not just the training of the mind; it is also the education of the sensibility.
Sensibility was what Mustapha Hussain, for instance, who studied agricultural science in Serdang in the pre-war years, possessed but this was not a random element.
It arose from the possession of a heart that was a resonator of realities he agonized over coupled with a mind that hungered for answers.
These qualities were nurtured by knowledge of history and a capacity to be inspired by its sterling aspects.
These are ineffable, intangible qualities, valuable in themselves even if incalculable.
Sterile would be the society that strips educational curricula of their value. – May 1, 2026
Terence Netto is a veteran journalist
You can be as well-read as Aljunied and still miss the wood for the trees – Terence Netto
Associate Professor Khairuddin Aljunied says education in the humanities is becoming obsolete because of the pervasiveness of AI, but that is no reason to consign the humanities to a back-burner
Updated 10 hours ago
1 May, 2026
8:27 AM MYT
Khairuddin Aljunied is a fluent-speaking academic who these days is often on social media.
He possesses the credentials for being a ubiquitous presence on the social media circuit.
Aljunied is Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore and Senior Fellow at Georgetown University, USA.
An expert in the study of Islam in Southeast Asia, Aljunied is author and editor of 14 books, three of which alone were published in 2023.
This explains his prolificity as author.
Hence it was a jolt when he told a Ilmuwan Malaysia Madani forum titled “Muslim Unity in Times of Geopolitical Crisis” that several disciplines, especially in the humanities, would soon be obsolete.
According to Aljunied, the escalating presence of AI will consign the humanities and its study to obsolescence.
It is an opinion that portrays Aljunied as an academic who sees universities becoming factories for the production of utilitarian knowledge only.
If you read Aljunied’s book, Malaysia’s Forgotten Struggles for Freedom, a title published by an American university in 2015 and reprinted in Malaysia in 2024, you will glimpse a refutation of his prediction in the work’s first chapter.
It begins with an excerpt from freedom fighter Mustapha Hussain’s book, Malay Nationalism before Umno.
Mustapha belonged to the cohort of left wingers among the Malay intelligentsia who strove, from the decades before the Second World War and leading up to Merdeka, to free Malaya from British rule.
The excerpt describes stirrings in the author’s heart as he observed his people’s poverty, intimations that set his mind to free his people from colonial exploitation to gain the independence that would bring prosperity.
In Mustapha’s telling, the promptings originated in his reading of the exploits of Robin Hood and of stories of the French Revolution which saw the overthrow of a corrupt and oppressive monarchy.
These inspirational themes Mustapha, who was educated in English language schools, gleaned from books he read while in school. They touched him to the quick.
No doubt, Aljunied, surveying the AI-driven tide of new technologies rapidly coming onstream, is tempted to forget that education is not just the training of the mind; it is also the education of the sensibility.
Sensibility was what Mustapha Hussain, for instance, who studied agricultural science in Serdang in the pre-war years, possessed but this was not a random element.
It arose from the possession of a heart that was a resonator of realities he agonized over coupled with a mind that hungered for answers.
These qualities were nurtured by knowledge of history and a capacity to be inspired by its sterling aspects.
These are ineffable, intangible qualities, valuable in themselves even if incalculable.
Sterile would be the society that strips educational curricula of their value. – May 1, 2026
Terence Netto is a veteran journalist
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