James Chin aghast at allowing “KMI elements” instead of meritocracy to thrive at public varsities

James Chin aghast at allowing “KMI elements” instead of meritocracy to thrive at public varsities

AVID political commentator Prof James Chin has taken a potshot at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) for their inaction against historical distortions by their senior academicians after a Cambridge professor at the centre of a plagiarism row resigned “with immediate effect”.

On Wednesday (Aug 5), the top UK higher learning institution said it had launched an investigation into Prof Jason Arday “following new information” about his “academic qualifications and honorary appointments”.

Arday who became the university’s youngest ever black professor in 2023 has admitted errors in his work but said he had faced “an unrelenting level of public scrutiny and personal attack” and was not a “liar”.

“This is what happens when institutions abandon meritocracy in favour of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to appoint people who are clearly unqualified,” lamented the inaugural director of the Asia Institute at the University of Tasmania in a Facebook post.


“I could understand it in a university serving a low-socio-economic status area but this is Cambridge. It shows the rot at “top” universities.”

This was when Chin claimed that Malaysia, too, faces a similar problem “excep that it’s driven by the supremacist KMI (acronym for ketuanan Melayu Islam) elements rather than DEI”.

‘Doesn’t justify high ranking’

“Look at the Solehah (IIUM Arabic language specialist Prof Solehah Yaacob) case and the (UPM) professors who published “history papers” on Melaka till they were later forced to retract after a French amateur historian exposed them,” rued the Senior Fellow at the Jeffrey Cheah Institute for Global Studies at Sunway University.

Then a UM (Universiti Malaya) academic journal published a paper without peer-review. The journal says an investigation will be carried out but of course nobody was punished.

Despite the exposure, no university action was taken against Solehah or the historians involved. One of those historians remains a Datuk and still holds his post.

Chin who is a Sarawakian went on to vouch that he has no objection “to promote people from under-represented groups provided they actually meet the academic standards required for the role”.

“If they later engage in indefensible work, the least a university can do is remove them and thereby protect its own integrity. Be honest about your failure,” asserted the senior research associate at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman’s (UTAR) Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre for Social and Policy Studies (TCLI).

There is this fear in among Malaysian universities that if they promote research integrity and academic meritocracy, it will undermine KMI.

By failing to act in these cases, Malaysian universities demonstrate that KMI is the overriding ideology that governs them.

Malaysian universities may claim high positions in various ranking metrics but real academics know those rankings are a mirage for as long as KMI remains the true operating philosophy.

So every year, we play the game. When the rankings are published, all the Malaysian universities congratulate themselves; the government says Malaysian universities are world-class, etc. When someone points research misconduct, cover-up is the first priority.

Am I right? – Aug 7, 2026

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KMI is not just at universities - it's everywhere since the 1980's