Sam Rany, Ph.D.

Dear LIFT, I am writing to respond to Sam Rany’s letter from the May 23, 2012 issue that attempted to legitimise the ban by the Royal University of Law and Economics on certain graduate thesis topics. As far as academic freedom is concerned, I was shocked when I read Sam Rany’s letter that tried to justify RULE’s unacceptable ban. The three justifications he used were (1) to prevent graduate students from facing difficulties when doing their thesis on the stock market, because of their limited English proficiency; (2) to avoid the situation that these students will not have supervisors with sufficient qualifications and expertise on the subject-matter; and finally (3) as the result of (1) and (2), to avoid having potential findings of the research that can be misleading, thus negatively causing ‘internal backlash’. My position is the ban is not in any way appropriate in the academic world. First, limited English proficiency amongst graduate students across Cambodia is a com

Dear LIFT, Having read your article “Should university take stock in your thesis?” (LIFT 121, May 9, 2012), I would like to contribute my personal comments in response. Last February, most mass media and social communication networks had broadcasted and discussed Royal University of Law and Economic’s official announcement prohibiting their students from pursuing certain research topics for their graduation thesis. At that time, some scholars and civil societies considered this as controversial, citing political motivation as a violation of academic freedom. However, I think there are legitimate reasons behind RULE’s ban on certain topics that need to be considered. To begin with, Cambodian students will face many problems with their English proficiency because most documents related to these subjects are written in English. For example, the stock market is a new economic phenomenon in Cambodia. Most universities are lacking library resources with updated documents, textb