Government agencies would take further action after UM submits the promised full report on the incident.
Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil today expressed regret at Universiti Malaya (UM) for inviting a foreign speaker who made controversial statements and disrespected the sentiments of the community, especially concerning Malaysia’s support for Palestine.
Fahmi said he was completely baffled by UM’s action in inviting the speaker who was inclined towards the Zionist regime.
Fahmi, who is also Lembah Pantai Member of Parliament, said that this should not have happened, let alone at UM, because the university is the alma mater of many of the country’s top leaders.
“UM is also located in my parliamentary constituency and as the MP, I deeply regretted it.
“We all know that our Prime Minister (Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim) has always been vocal in championing the Palestinian cause,” he said at the Communications Ministry’s Monthly Assembly in Putrajaya today.
UM has been in hot soup after allowing a political science professor, Bruce Gilley, to spread Zionist propaganda and accuse Malaysian leaders of advocating a “second Holocaust” for Jews during his talk at the university.
The presence of Gilley at the university went viral on X yesterday after it was uploaded by the professor himself.
Earlier today, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Zambry Abd Kadir ordered all programmes and activities scheduled to be attended by the professor to be cancelled immediately.
The university has also been asked to investigate the matter and report further details as soon as possible.
UM hosted a talk by Gilley on Tuesday (April 23) where he claimed that Malaysia had pushed for a “second holocaust against the Jewish people” which has since drawn massive criticism online.
Gilley has yet to apologise for his comments and instead triggered further controversy by claiming that Malaysia was not a safe place to travel to in a post on X after leaving.
Fahmi added that he and other relevant government agencies would take further action after UM submits the promised full report on the incident.
Gilley, a professor of political science at Portland State University, was invited by the Department of International and Strategic Studies for three events, starting from a seminar on international relations on Monday.
On Tuesday, Gilley delivered a keynote address titled “Will Malaysia Become an Active Middle Power” and yesterday in an X post about the speech said “a country whose political leaders advocate a second Holocaust against the Jewish people will never be a serious player in world affairs, and will certainly never be a friend or partner of the US”.
Gilley pointed to the remarks of former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Agriculture Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Sabu.
He has since deleted the post, claiming it was for the safety and well-being of UM staff who invited him.
Gilley is known to be a supporter of Israel, displaying the state’s flag on his X account.
He is also a controversial figure among the Western academia for praising Western colonialism and saying it should be “reclaimed”, considered “legitimate”, and even “resurrected”.
In 2017, his article The Case for Colonialism was published in the Third World Quarterly journal and provoked massive controversy resulting in two petitions signed by thousands of academics calling for the editor responsible to be sacked, while 15 of the journal’s 34-member editorial board resigned in protest.
Among others, he suggested that governments in developing countries replicate “colonial governance of their pasts” — citing Singapore as a successful example.
On his X account earlier this week, Gilley had also mocked an exhibit of the British colonial and the Malayan resistance in the National Museum here.
In October last year, he wrote an article titled The Academic Roots of Hamas’s Terror, blaming the American academia for furthering support for Hamas.