PPE and everything under the sun

While there was a time when the British rejoiced on the notion that "the sun shall never set on the empire", the blood and money they spent on World War II between 1939 and 1945 sapped their economic energy completely.

The chaos of Brexit, for the lack of better word, is a culmination of all that has been tried and tested in Britain since the fateful end of the British empire - and it is now coming home to roost.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is a graduate of Oxford University; her predecessor David Cameron graduated from Cambridge. Even Margaret Thatcher, who did much to privatise Britain, was a graduate in chemistry from Oxford.

One may well include Tony Blair, another Oxford graduate, who bumbled into the Second Gulf War, led by then US president George Bush, an alumnus from Yale University, lunging at Saddam Hussein without a single shred of evidence that could amount to any weapon of mass destruction.

Be that as it may, the late Rustam Sani, with a prominent PhD in sociology from Yale, used to affirm way back, during his days as a columnist for Dewan Masyarakat in 1988, that of all the degrees that can transform one into a top thinker, it is worthwhile to consider “PPE”.

PPE stands for Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Oxford is one of the few to offer the degree, but it seems the University of Warwick in Coventry City, which is fast emerging as one of the top five universities in the UK, has begun offering it's own PPE course too.

Warwick may not be known to many Asians. Yet, as early as 1990, it had begun enlisting top scholars, usually critical theorists like Professor Robert Cox and Prof Timothy Sinclair, to look into the problems of the international financial system. The late Prof Susan Strange, who used to be at the London School of Economics (LSE), moved to Warwick to complete a spectacular book called Casino Capitalism.

Casino Capitalism warned about the impending dangers of the financial crisis, a topic which was also well-covered by Prof Robert Schiller at Yale University, who in turn received a Nobel Prize in economics.

The husband and wife pair of Prof Richard Higgot and Prof Diane Stone were also roped in by Warwick to understand the political economy of the world. Together, they produced journals such as the Pacific Review and the International Political Economy, which remain classic academic contributions to this day.

Stone, in turn, specialised in the power and reach of global think-tanks, although she has now moved from Warwick to the Central Open University in Hungary.

Grappling with Brexit

Come what may, there are two PPE products in the Malaysian Parliament: Tony Pua and Khairy Jamaluddin. Pua used his PPE training and skill to deadly effect - by pinning Najib Abdul Razak and Umno to the wall on 1MDB, helped by (as one must concede) Rafizi Ramli, a chartered auditor. The other, who is belatedly trying to uncover the destructive effects of 1MDB, is Khairy.

Prior to going to Oxford for his PPE degree, Khairy was at the United College in Singapore, which prides itself on altruistic service. Khairy must have seen the rise of the whole scam. But he didn't.

Sharifah Syed Azman is one of the up-and-coming PPE graduates at Warwick. One hopes that she will be able to call a spade a spade in the future.

As for Cambridge, a BA or MA in the History of Intellectual Thought and increasingly, in International Relations, are now highly sought after. The same goes for its BA and MA in Social and Political Studies (SPS). The History of Intellectual Thought used to be led by Prof Quentin Skinner, one of the best minds in the field while SPS was led by Prof Anthony Giddens, before he moved to LSE.

But regardless of how well the students do, they must grapple with Brexit, both before and after its potential manifestation on March 29 next year. The sun that never sets on the British Empire has set. It is now incumbent on Britain to reach out to its old colonies.

In September, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was kind enough to meet May (photo, above) not once or twice but thrice. If the British are good at anything, they seem adept at understanding the need to navigate themselves away from every political and economic danger.

PPE graduates can and do help if they have the right moral compass. If they don't, then Britain cannot be impervious to what Malaysia went through with 1MDB.

The key to the brilliance of PPE is the emergence of a class of leaders and thinkers who can understand the world from various vantage points. They must possess the curiosity and humility to ask probing questions. And, when they do, apply them to the context of nation-building and global peace.

As the late Mahatma Gandhi once said, "The world will have enough for everyone's needs but not everyone's greed." Indeed, even the greed of a former prime minister and his wife was enough to bring Malaysia to its knees.

Had it not for the democratic rebound of May 9, no matter how many PPE graduates Malaysia has, either in the country or offshore, they eventually have been floored and out for the count.

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PHAR KIM BENG was a Commonwealth Scholar at Cambridge, prior to his academic stint at Harvard, the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo and Waseda University. - Mkini