Khoo’s comments did not go unnoticed because his former student, Rachel Leow, wrote him an open letter, which went viral. She was a PhD student at Cambridge, and she dared to correct him.

Umno policies of the 1980s-1990s shaped institutional behaviour. Public narratives were tightly controlled. Some were encouraged, others were treated cautiously, and those that generated controversy were banned. Self-censorship and silence became the new norm.

So when people ask why historians appear silent or restrained, the answer they give is not just fear. It is also because of structure.

Post 1969, the political atmosphere punished perceived challenges to sensitive identity frameworks. In time, institutions naturally learned to operate carefully within those boundaries. Public history then took shape.

Non-Malay erasure

Take Kuala Lumpur.

Critics claim that Yap Ah Loy, one of the key founders of modern Kuala Lumpur, has been reduced to little more than a passing mention in school narratives.

The parents who complained about this distortion of our early history say this is not about one missing name. They worry about how stories get flattened over time.

The narrative promoted by some Umno leaders five decades ago was that non-Malays were relatively recent arrivals to the country, having come only within the last 200 years.

Critics argue that this framing ignored the much older presence of Chinese and Indian communities in the Malay peninsula as miners, traders, and spice merchants who arrived through the monsoon trade networks centuries earlier.

Then there is the deeper past.

Sites such as Bujang Valley in Kedah reflect a long archaeological history of trade, industry, settlement, and Hindu-Buddhist cultural influence in early Southeast Asia.

Had this heritage been more fully preserved and allowed to flourish, with its many artefacts and ancient structures protected, Malaysia might today rival historical treasures such as Angkor Wat in Cambodia or Borobudur in Indonesia.

To many observers, the lack of urgency in preserving these sites gave the impression that the authorities preferred not to draw too much attention to the country’s non-Islamic historical roots.

Furthermore, the Orang Asli are the original settlers of Malaya, but they remain as a mere footnote in history books.

Inheriting an environment of caution

What many parents and some teachers describe to me is not a conspiracy. It is a caution. Certain historical topics, especially those touching on identity, origin narratives, or competing interpretations of early civilisation, may not be discussed freely in institutional settings.

Not because it is formally forbidden, but because, over time, a culture develops where stepping too far outside accepted framing feels risky, unnecessary, or professionally unwise.

Khairy may have criticised historians, but academic caution is not the root problem. This pattern of silence among experts is not unique to history.

In mining, industry, and engineering, warnings about hill development, slope stability, radiation, and ecological risks are often raised early, and without drama.

Yet, those warnings frequently gain public attention only after a disaster forces visibility.

Then the same questions return: who knew, who warned, and why was it not acted on sooner?

The issue is not simply “cowardly professors”. That framing is too easy. It shifts attention away from the longer political and institutional history that shaped what could be safely said, and what could not.

Historians did not design that environment. They inherited it.

And when political actors now express frustration at historical confusion, the harder question is not why some academics are quiet, but how the boundaries of acceptable speech were formed in the first place, and by whom.

History is not only written in books.

It is shaped by political frameworks, institutional incentives, and the long shadow of national narratives, including “Ketuanan Melayu” as a defining feature of Malaysia’s post-independence political architecture.