Time to take a S-E Asian approach to multilateralism

TWO years ago, I became director of SOAS University of London, a university with 100 years of scholarship focused on Asia, Africa and the Middle East. SOAS was set up in 1916 to train colonial administrators for the British Empire, to help the "Old World Order" function. And while we did indeed train perhaps thousands of British diplomats, we soon evolved to be a unique, specialist institution championing the issues of the post-imperial global south - bringing together the best social sciences, arts and humanities research and teaching about these regions and the rest of the world and, crucially, making the connections between them. We look beyond a purely western-centric outlook in every aspect of our scholarship.

As we face the impact of increasing volatility, it is impossible to be at SOAS and not reflect on the state of the world. It is against this backdrop that I recently delivered the ST Lee lecture at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. The title of the Lecture, "Challenges and Opportunities in a World Turned Upside Down", relates to my personal concerns about the crisis of public confidence in social democracy in the west, post-1945 international multilateral order and the challenges and opportunities for Asean.

Today, we are facing an unprecedented set of global challenges, threats and unsolved crises.