Since taking the mantel of the country’s oldest public university, this ENT specialist has had the unenviable task to managing negative perceptions resulting from several controversies: the removal of UM’s Center of Democracy and Elections, the prosecution of student activists called the UM8, the sedition charge against law professor Azmi Sharom and its refusal to participate in the Times Higher Education university rankings. We also engage him on the question of the government’s plan to be the sixth largest higher education exporter by 2020.