Is academic freedom dead in Singapore?

On 22 March 2026, Malaysian activist Dr Fadiah Nadwah Fakir crossed the Malaysia-Singapore border. The trip would be mostly business: she was to deliver a guest lecture at the university where she had recently received her doctorate. To her surprise, Dr Fadiah was refused entry to Singapore and turned back to Malaysia at the Woodlands Checkpoint. She was an undesirable visitor, according to the receipts she posted on her social media accounts. In her own words, the ordeal was "extremely outrageous and distressing". Given that her candidature at the National University of Singapore was uneventful, if not model, Dr Nadiah alleged her "deportation" signals the state's disapproval of her research interests in postcolonial theory.

Safe and nonpolitical medieval students and scholars drinking and gambling,
from the Carmina Burana manuscript

Prof Khoo Ying Hooi, an international relations expert regularly consulted by Singapore's The Straits Times for regional and Malaysian political analysis, has opined that this incident is proof that Singapore actively polices the boundaries of academics to restrict their legitimate activities within education, and away from political activism and advocacy. Such a pity, the prof sniffs, as this overlap is the "common" mode of academic expression in the region.

Dr Fadiah's online theatrics and performative outrage may play to her social media audience,  but Prof Khoo's quiet piece presents a challenge that Home Affairs minister K Shanmugam cannot swat away easily: Was Singapore's action not just heavyhanded, but detrimental to academic freedom? Did striking Dr Fadiah also inadvertently hurt academic freedom and academic independence or autonomy, on which any functional democracy depends?

Did the Home Ministry destroy academic freedom in Singapore?

We note that both the Ministry for Home Affairs and K Shanmugam, the Home Affairs minister, eventually issued statements regarding Dr Fadiah. Given that she was turned away at the immigration checkpoint, and the immigration authority is under his ministry, that's about as official as a statement you could get from the relevant authority on the matter.

How K Shanmugam is often seen by activists and liberals

Taken together, Singapore authorities claim that Dr Fadiah had interfered, intervened in local politics in the worst possible way: "She encouraged local activists to adopt her brand of radical advocacy. Incited them to break the law and use violence."

Let's take all 3 narratives at face value for the moment, which means assuming all sides were telling the truth, as much as they were willing and able, given their positions and interests.

3 questions will need to be answered in order to say if academic freedom has been compromised.

Is Dr Fadiah a scholar?

Is anyone who has earned PhD a scholar? To date, a cursory search of Google Scholar reveals Dr Fadiah has published nothing and been cited by no one. A cursory search of NUS Department of Southeast Asian Studies faculty directory reveals Dr Fadiah is not teaching staff at the university, i.e. an actual scholar and academic. I'm sorry, but a teaching fellowship (meaning one's PhD course fees are paid in lieu of serving as a teaching assistant) does not make one a scholar or academic.

That is not to say that Dr Fadiah cannot be a scholar. She may choose to conduct and publish her scholarly work in the future as a self-employed independent researcher or a roving researcher in service of an NGO. She may find a foreign think-tank to host her. She may find a teaching or research position in a university. She has not yet done any of the three, given that she has just gotten her PhD. It is premature to call Dr Fadiah a scholar, and any action against her a blow to academic freedom.

Did NUS exercise its academic freedom?

Dr Fadiah claims Singapore refused her entry as an attack on her area of research.

Yet she has pursued that area of research without obstruction, friendly warnings, inducement to change track from the university. She has even survived the adjudication process for doctoral candidates, most likely with a few foreign academics on the examination panel. From this, we can deduce that postcolonial theory is entirely kosher however much it is a contested domain of knowledge and activism; Dr Fadiah's successfully defended her doctoral thesis, and passed muster and academic scrutiny; Dr Fadiah conducted her research at the university at arm's length from the radical advocacy she tried to introduce to activists in Singapore.

Given that the university even teaches a module on postcolonialism at the Department of Political Science, and various teaching staff and nus think tanks have produced monographs, even published on postcolonial projects, we can deduce that academic freedom does indeed exist in Singapore's NUS, insofar as the postcolonial subject of inquiry is concerned, and further deduce that Dr Fadiah is engaging in a campaign of misdirection here: she knows it's her very recent attempt to promote radical activism, not her postcolonial interests that have gotten her barred from entry. Otherwise, she woud've been arrested any time in the past 5 years of her doctoral candidature in NUS.

What would an attack on academic freedom look like? Is this close to what actually happened?

The authoritarian impulse is strong in Singapore's subreddits. Links will not be provided but one can easily look to the online mobs for an answer, which include but are not restricted to: issuing a warrant of arrest, withdrawing Dr Fadiah's doctorate, disciplining her thesis supervisor, trotting out the Dean for Graduate Studies and the head of the Southeast Asian Studies issue to a denouncement of Dr Fadiah...

So what was it really all about?

We note reports that Fadiah, just prior to her decision to quit practising as a lawyer, was under federal investigation for seditious online postings, for calling followers on Twitter to "take to the streets, democracy is dead".

That as they would say, is a career ender. One may deduce that she did not quit lawyering; she quit when she was ahead. The only viable career path for Fadiah is... yes, you guessed it: academia, where current orthodoxy rewards the far left, where critical race theory, decolonisation, etc. are legitimate fields of study, where even a dash of activism, however radical, is becoming respectable in the West.

Fadiah's doctoral candidature at the National University of Singapore is her great escape.

But that's not all Fadiah was escaping from. According to a primer on Malaysian politics that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Australia prepared for the European Country of Origin Information Network, Fadiah Nadwah is primarily a protest organiser who was arrested in 2020. Not just investigated for sedition. Not a lawyer. Not an activist. A professional protest organiser with legal qualifications, who has been bloodied in the Bersih street protests in 2016. And not just a professional protest organiser, but a regular contributor to various Leftist online magazines whose positions and position-taking (Hard Left to Socialist, radical, and self-radicalising) are indistinguishable from that of the official propaganda newsletter of the Malaysian Socialist Party. We note that Dr Fadiah's erstwhile co-writers were recently arrested by Malaysian police for violent protests outside the American embassy at Kuala Lumpur.

Perhaps she meant to inspire Singapore's own pro-Gaza activists to do the same. Or had planned to teach NUS students about postcolonial and anti-imperalism protests, using her personal contacts, experience, and expertise. The only reason why Dr Fadiah was barred from entry instead of arrested? We at Illusio suggest that at least one of her target youth activists in Singapore must've privately opposed her attempts to mentor and radicalise them into violent activists, and called in the relevant authorities while no harm was done by her, and while local activists have achieved significant milestones, and still have their independence and take no orders from the Malayan jungle.