A Lecturer at Nanyang: A Memoir Michael Thorpe In Singapore many of our prized shibboleths academic freedom, democracy, multiculturalism, the welfare state have been trimmed and shaped by a pragmatic hand in a very small, viable city-state peopled largely by a traditionally hardworking race disposed, by long tradition, to accept an enlightened paternalism. While it cannot serve as a model for larger countries with greater populations divided among regional interests, it is a signal demonstration, microscopically, of the limits and art of the possible.
