Public Relations UPNVJ - Jakarta "Veteran" National Development University (UPNVJ) sent Deputy Dean 3 for Cooperation and Student Affairs, Musa Maliki, PhD, to Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) to follow up on the exploration of cooperation between the two universities which was carried out in early September.
In this next stage, UPNVJ and UKM sign a Letter of Intent (Lol) and Implementation of Agreement (IA) before moving towards a Memorandum of Understanding or MoU.
The signing of the LoI and IA was carried out by Musa together with the Director of the UKM Institute for Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), Prof. Dr. Sufian Juson on Wednesday, October 25 2023.
"Cooperation in a collaborative forum is important between countries in order to understand each other, learn from each other with the ultimate goal of peace," said Musa.
"Peace is expensive, but people sometimes underestimate it when they live peacefully in peace. It's as if the peace they feel is free. Universities have the task of creating peace and intelligence for the nation," he continued.
"The Tri Dharma of Higher Education is realized in collaboration between UPNVJ and UKM, such as discussing crucial issues which are then used as writing books or special edition journals, lecturer exchanges, and also research collaboration," explained Musa.
According to Musa, this collaboration between UPNVJ and UKM can provide open insight for both universities to carry out international and strategic-based research, so that the goal of peace can continue (perpetual piece).
"I say, hopefully the cooperation that has been agreed upon can be put into a more concrete form," said Musa.
ASEAN Vision 2045
Regarding this signing, Prof. Dr. Sufian said that UKM has established many partners in the world. Regarding collaboration with UPNVJ, he opens up opportunities for students who want to take a master's program at UKM, one of the universities in the top 200 in the world.
"We provide opportunities for supervisors from Indonesia if there are Indonesian postgraduate students studying at UKM. They will be assisted in writing their thesis, especially with language barriers," said Prof. Dr. Sufian.
Apart from discussing the cooperation agreement, Musa and the UKM staff also held a workshop and brainstorming regarding the Malaysia-Indonesia post-2025 ASEAN discussion. This discussion is considered important because IKMAS has been appointed by the Malaysian Government as the research center for the chairmanship of ASEAN 2025 for the vision of ASEAN 2045.
IKMAS plays an important role in substantive-intellectual policy making following the High-Level Task Force on ASEAN Community Post-2025 Vision (HLTV-ACV) and the ASEAN Ministry of Foreign Affairs in determining the blueprint for the ASEAN 2045 vision.
"The next concrete step for us is to make a policy recommendation from Indonesian and Malaysian scientists/academics for the 2045 vision blueprint," said Prof. Dr. Sufian.
Apart from external issues such as the South China Sea and Myanmar's internal conflict, ASEAN also faces internal (institutional) problems such as difficulties in reaching consensus when not all member countries implement democratic values and do not have a democratic system. In this case, academics have the task of maintaining peace and security stability in ASEAN through their capacity, namely through policy recommendations and other intellectual work.