A number of Yale faculty members, including Christopher Miller, are outraged over Yale’s decision to partner with the National University of Singapore to establish a liberals arts college in Singapore, Yale-NUS College. Christopher Shea outlines the controversy at his blog. The objection, as I understand it, is that Singapore is an illiberal, authoritarian state and that Yale’s decision to partner with Singapore’s government constitutes an implicit endorsement of its various policies.

Miller writes:

You do not have freedom of expression if, at the same time, as Salovey puts it, you must watch out for the “risks currently associated with public, personal condemnations of governmental officials and institutions.” Each of those terms (“personal,” “condemnation”) will be interpreted by illiberal Singaporean authorities. Nathan Bullock, a Fulbright fellow now working at National University Singapore, reports “censorship” and “intimidation” on campus, and he quotes an English professor there who says “We have no rights.” The professors of Yale-NUS will thus write and teach with a double specter hanging over them: On the one hand, the Singaporean state and its repressive laws, and on the other, a Yale-New Haven administration that defends the repression.

Interestingly, Miller closed with the following:

But would there really be such a “dark side” if Yale were to open a campus in Paris, New Delhi, Johannesburg, or Buenos Aires? Of course not. Unfortunately, Yale did not choose any of those locations, in free and democratic socie­ties. Instead Yale followed the money and sold its principles to autocrats.

As Miller knows, Jacob Zuma, the South African president, doesn’t have a sterling record on matters pertaining to human rights, though he has distanced himself from past statements that seemed to constitute an endorsement of, for example, homophobic violence. India has been accused, fairly or unfairly, of engaging in brutal repression in its various efforts to combat domestic insurgencies. So then we’re left with Paris and Buenos Aires.

I think that Singapore is a country that has made impressive strides in improving its civil liberties record, and Yale is right to consider the direction in which Singapore is heading.