'Academic world must use freedom responsibly'

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto said yesterday that the academic world needs to exercise its freedom responsibly to churn out new ideas and proposals for the benefit of the nation.

"The world of higher learning is the center of activities where new and fresh initiatives are produced for the advancement of the nation," Soeharto said at the inauguration of a new campus at the state-run University of Andalas in Padang, West Sumatra.

"These new and fresh initiatives will come easier in an open and free, as well as responsible, academic world," he added.

The government, while maintaining that academic liberty should always be respected, has repeatedly warned in the past that it would not tolerate any attempts to turn the country's university campuses into political hotbeds as they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Many students continue to argue that the policy of depoliticizing campus activities is not consistent with the concept of academic freedom.

Soeharto said yesterday that all university students should make the most of their university time to attain the highest achievements possible in order to answer the challenges that they and the country will face in the 21st century.

"Use the allotted time wisely and stay away from activities that are of no use," he said.

The higher education world, the President said, should also be seen as a vehicle to develop nationalist values because the universities take students that come from all corners of the archipelago.

"Very often we find some university campuses in the country becoming a miniature of Indonesia, with students from different ethnic groups, religions, languages and backgrounds converging in one place."

The President in his speech recognized West Sumatra as one of the provinces in Indonesia that has always held education, especially science, in high regard. He noted that many scholars, writers and other figures that gained national stature in the early years of Indonesia's independence, came from this province.

"This deeply rooted traditional culture of placing high value on education and science and of according people of letters in high position should be sustained and developed in this modern era."

West Sumatrans, he added, should not be too disillusioned if their present intellectuals no longer appeared to be as prominent as their predecessors because this did not necessarily mean that the province has suffered a setback.

"This is happening because other regions have made significant progress. Progress all round is what we have jointly endeavored," he added. (emb)