“Many of the most highly regarded works on Malaysian history, politics, economics, sociology and law have been carried out here at Australian National University.” The director of the newly set-up Malaysia Institute was also reported saying that  “Australian scholarship on Malaysia has declined in recent years, and more Australians studied the Malay language in the 1970s than they do today.” To understand the larger higher education story as well as the specifics of the Institute, we speak to the Ross Tapsell its newly minted director.