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By Dr OOI KEE BENG My being here today, in Adelaide, South Australia, is still a great surprise to me. This is because there are certain geographical journeys in one’s step-by-step trip through life that one does not envisage for a variety of reasons. Australia was never on my to-see and to-do list. I lived … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, in The Edge Malaysia’s column “Picking on the Present”, 17-25 April 2025 Continuing the line of thinking presented in this column last month, on “Recognising Colonial History as the Genesis of Malaysian History”, we are given a shocking current example of how excessive nostalgia for post glory, by its nature, always … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng A shorter version published on 13 April 2025 by South China Morning Post as “Decoding Trump’ s tariffs and the world’s multipolar future” can be read at South China Morning Post, 13 Apr 2025: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3306221/decoding-trumps-tariffs-and-worlds-multipolar-future?display=plus Perhaps what the world is missing in trying to make head or tail of Trump’s tariff … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, April 2025 editorial in Penang Monthly. I AM IN THE foothills of the peninsula’s main mountain range, off Gopeng. It is early morning, 7am. From the balcony of my room, I throw pellets from a bag provided by the hotel to the multitude of pink and gold fish in the pond. … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, in The Edge Malaysia, 22-29 March 2025. AS WESTERN POWERS go into crisis mode again, and as the global structure within which the nations of the world relate to each other evolves beyond recognition, there is great need for historians to step up. Their voice is needed to help us analyse, … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, Penang Monthly March 2025 Editorial I AM STRONGLY convinced that as long as children continue to be brought up to learn behaviours and imbibe ideas that certain groups of humans are inherently worth less than others, we can expect human civilisation to not be much more than an exercise in Damage … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng , for The Edge Malaysia, 21-28 February, 2025 AS THE TSUNAMI of earth-shaking executive orders bursts out of Trump’s Oval Office, the world tries to stay upright. Our legs seem rubbery though. Now we know what collective vertigo feels like. For now, the shock is greatest for Washington’s closest allies. Learning … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial for February 2025, Penang Monthly IT IS OFTEN SAID—way too often—that “History belongs to the Victor”. There is of course a lot of truth in the dictum. But it faults for being glib, and for being a discussion stopper. What I find more fruitful to consider is that “History belongs … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng “Picking on the Present” column in The Edge Malaysia, 25-31 January 2025 As geopolitical shifts continue in ways that profoundly affecting East Asia, processes of decolonization in this region—most begun after World War Two, many transmuted by how that war ended, and all captured within the conflicts and standoffs of the … Continue reading
Ooi Kee Beng is executive director of Penang Institute and author of Signals in the Noise: Notes on Penang, Malaysia and the World (Faction Press). Featured in “Head to Head” in History Today January 2025: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/head-head/what-modernity. “For most of the world, modernity arrived as a fully formed composite” MODERNITY HAS TO be considered a global event. It … Continue reading
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