Robin Jeffrey reflects on the new ASAA report, 础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 Asia Education Imperative, co-authored by Melissa Crouch and Edward Aspinall. Professor Jeffrey was an editor-author of Maximizing 础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 Asia Knowledge (with John Fitzgerald, Kama Maclean and Tessa Morris-Suzuki), the ASAA鈥檚 2002 report on the condition of Asian studies.
础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 Asia Education Imperative reflects the scholarly passion and commitment of its authors and their associates. To have completed this project during the difficulties of Covid is a tribute to the authors and their conviction that the messages in the report are important for 础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 long-term future.
It would be pleasing to say that the report has turned up evidence that the study of the languages, cultures and histories of 础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 neighbours and new diasporas is flourishing. The authors do indeed assure readers that 鈥渘othing … should be taken to suggest that the field [of Asian studies] in Australia is weak in global terms, and the trends we have outlined do not suggest it is in terminal or even steep decline鈥� (66). In the face of the evidence, however, this statement represents an announcement that the lifeboats aren鈥檛 leaking.
In Australia today, there are born in Vietnam and thousands of Australia-born people of Vietnam-origin families. There are more than from each of Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea and Sri Lanka. In the 2021 census, close to recorded their ancestry as Chinese. The India-origin population has grown from twenty years ago to close to today.
The report concludes that 鈥渢he study of South Asia [Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka] is strikingly weak鈥� (63). Australia and India have flirted enthusiastically a few times in the past fifty years, but these encounters have previously faded away. Today, however, Australian authorities are optimistic about trading opportunities to replace a few Chinese markets, and 鈥渢he QUAD鈥� 鈥� the four-power mateship of the US, Japan, India and Australia 鈥� excites some analysts. And, most important of all, the size of new diaspora today assures a new continuity as people-to-people contacts are here to stay.
These demographic changes mean that Australians in a wide variety of roles 鈥� transport, retail, law, medicine, government 鈥� need a greater knowledge of their neighbours, clients, business partners and co-workers. This applies in varying degrees for migrants from all countries, but it will be particularly noticeable in the case of migrants from South Asia, because of both their numbers and diversity.
The consequences of flimsy knowledge were obvious in 2007 in the case of Dr Mohammed Haneef, an Indian doctor, wrongly detained in Australia in connection with a terrorist bombing in Glasgow. In the sixth hour of interrogation, an interviewing police officer that 鈥済eography was not one of my better subjects at school鈥�, asking 鈥淏angalore, where鈥檚 that in relation to Pakistan?鈥�. In , when asked whether a word was Indian or Arabic, the transcript records Dr Haneef as saying that 鈥渋t鈥檚 from Udo [sic]鈥�. The police officer asks 鈥淪o it鈥檚 an Udo?鈥�, displaying no apparent knowledge of the Urdu language.
In those days, ANU offered Urdu in Perso-Arabic script as a subject, and ANU, La Trobe, Sydney and RMIT offered Hindi, Urdu鈥檚 near relative, written in Devanagari script.
Fifteen years later, 础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 Asia Education Imperative has found that Urdu has disappeared altogether and the number of universities teaching Hindi had fallen from four to two (ANU and La Trobe) (39). Australia now has about a million residents with origins in South Asia, of which a substantial proportion speak Hindi or Urdu.
The consequences of scant knowledge crop up more widely today, as Professor Manjula Datta O鈥機onnor, a Melbourne psychiatrist, suggests in . Datta O鈥機onnor recounts her experiences working with women from South Asia who often come from close family environments to an isolated Australian suburb. She suggests that a better understanding of South Asian history and culture could help both the immigrants and Australian agencies cope with the problems of living in a new country.
础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 Asia Education Imperative underlines the unwillingness of Australian governments and universities to maintain initiatives beyond three or four years. It鈥檚 a frailty of fifty years鈥� standing, harking back to the days when the 黑料社区 Co-ordinating Committee, set up by the Whitlam government, was ended by its successor. Repetitions since then are easy to find.
Contrast this with the 鈥渁rea studies鈥� programs in the United States, funded as National Resource Centres (NRC). In 2022, NRC grants around the US university system, each worth $500,000 a year, divided about equally between disciplinary studies and fellowships for language study.
Of those 98 programs, 45 were devoted to study of Asia 鈥� 19 for East Asia, 11 for the Middle East, eight for South Asia and seven for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Out of the total outlay of USD $56 million (AUD $85 million) for 2022, the Asia-related programs got about 40 per cent.
The population of the US is thirteen times larger than 础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚. If Australian governments invested one-thirteenth as much as in the US, the resulting seven million dollars a year could support at least seven centres comparable to those of the National Resource program.
National Resource Centre grants are competitive. Universities bid for them, and performance is reviewed 鈥� with the expectation of renewal, not closure 鈥� every four or five years. Programs, such as the one for South Asia at the University of California, Berkeley, have been funded for sixty years. Their longevity has enabled them to build endowments and expand activities.
础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 Asia Education Imperative makes a dozen recommendations to governments and universities. A number touch on tasks that National Resource Centres are required to perform. Language fellowships are one. Others include inter-university collaborations; in-country study; regular interaction with colleagues and institutions in Asia; appointments of well-qualified, motivated scholars to tenure-track (or at least, long-term contract) positions. The advantage of dedicated centres pursuing such tasks lies in the knowledge and motivation of a team of scholars in stable jobs.
The report makes one recommendation that didn鈥檛 seemed necessary in earlier reviews: universities should 鈥渞eaffirm a commitment to academic freedom.鈥� That may be tricky to achieve at the same time as maintaining steady interaction with universities in Asia. Increasingly illiberal governments 鈥� Modi鈥檚 India is one example 鈥� expect researchers to toe a government line.
As Australia profits from students and workers from Asia, and more and more Australian citizens have roots in Asia, widening and deepening knowledge is common sense. And for diplomacy, defence, business, trade and tourism, the case for Asia knowledge has been made for fifty years but has never seemed as urgent as today.
础耻蝉迟谤补濒颈补鈥檚 Asia Education Imperative deserves a wide readership. The long version 鈥� 50,000 words in a dense format 鈥� needs a concise, arresting presence for social media and a print-on-paper tract for missionary exercises. The report鈥檚 findings need to be made prominent whenever ASAA members are attending conferences, lobbying in their own institutions or persuading the unconverted.
Photo source: , Wasingun, 2021, exhibited at the and captured by