The Malaysian government gave the Ohio University Foundation $1 million to broaden OU’s 40-year, groundbreaking partnership with the country.

The million-dollar gift will expand an endowed professorship, the Tun Abdul Razak Chair, in Southeast Asian Studies. The chair is a senior Malaysian scholar selected every two years by the Malaysian Ministry of Education, former chairs and OU.
The Razak chair spends a two-year residency working with OU’s Center for International Studies and serving as a cultural envoy between Malaysia and the United States, said Josep Rota, OU’s associate provost for International Affairs.

In 1968, Malaysia asked OU to work with its Ministry of Higher Education to improve the country’s universities. That working relationship expanded in 1979, when the Malaysian government gave OU about $850,000 to establish the Razak chair, said Jennifer Bowie, director of Annual Giving and Communication.

The gift marked the first time a foreign government had endowed a chair at an American university. U.S. businesses and OU also contributed to the chair’s establishment, which took place in 1981 — two years after the initial gift.

OU hopes to match the Malaysian government’s latest gift with donations from U.S. companies, Bowie said, adding that OU will not contribute money towards the chair this year.

OU President Roderick McDavis and Howard Lipman, vice president of University Advancement, traveled to Malaysia twice to speak with the country’s Ministry of Education. Advancement worked for 16 months to secure the gift.

“The gift is going to elevate the visibility of the chair and make him or her more of a resource for the Malaysian Embassy in the United States, for policy makers in Washington, D.C., and for the media,” Bowie said. “This is really exciting for Southeast Asian studies and it will really help build this professorship into something it hasn’t been able to be in the past.”

Professor Dató Dr. Mohammad Salleh Din, the 13th and newest Razak chair, will arrive in Athens Saturday, Bowie said.
Salleh, who earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Ohio’s Miami University and received his Ph.D. in the United Kingdom, will work with business professors and the department of economics, Rota said.

Last August, Rota was a part of the five-person selection committee that chose Salleh from a group of eight finalists.

“He (Salleh) is a person who knows a lot about entrepreneurship, about how to develop a new business, about how to fund a new business, and he doesn’t only teach about it, he actually does it,” Rota said.