Peer pressure and narratives of success have made the world increasingly intolerant to sidetracks and mistakes. We are always told to have a goal, a plan, or at least a schedule, in order to be successful. Yet when I looked up my professors’ resumes, I found gaps between colleges and graduate schools. I wondered what they did in those years, and if they ever regretted digressing from the “right” path… Or were these sidetracks important parts of what shaped their main path?…
Prof. Tan Sor-Hoon is a Professor of Philosophy at Singapore Management University, the Academic Director of Politics, Law and Economics (PLE) major, and a Lee Kong Chian Fellow. She writes primarily on Confucianism and democratic theory. In this finale of a two-part series, The Diacritic’s Wang Xing Hao speaks to Prof. Tan on her life’s work reconciling Confucianism with democracy….
Within the span of a college career, Yale-NUS History Major Faris Joraimi (’21) has made a name for himself amongst Singaporean academic circles as an expert on Malay intellectual history. Now an editor for Raffles Renounced—a collection of essays decolonising Singaporean history—Faris chats with The Diacritic about how young students can be scholars in their own right. …
We’ve explained 2020’s Nobel Prizes. Now, The Diacritic’s Xing Hao and Rishav speak with one of the two winners of the 2010’s Nobel Prize in Physics, Prof. Sir Konstantin “Kostya” Novoselov. Not only is he a highly-distinguished physicist renowned for his groundbreaking work in isolating graphene, he is also formally trained in Chinese traditional painting. In this dialogue, Prof. Novoselov shares why he moved to Singapore, his current research, how his impatience motivated his scientific and artistic work, and his advice for young people today….
Confucius and his successors have greatly influenced East Asia for over two thousand years, but do they hold up in this modern age of egalitarian movements? In this dialogue, we spoke with Prof. Tan Sor-Hoon, Professor of Philosophy at Singapore Management University, on her forthcoming article on feminist challenges to Confucianism. We ask: is the Confucian tradition inherently sexist? And can it ever accommodate feminist ideals?
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