The Tun Abdul Razak Chair was established at Ohio University's Department of Southeast Asian Studies in 1980 in honor of Tun Abdul Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1970 to 1976. The Razak Chair was endowed jointly by a grant from the Malaysian government and matching funds from American firms operating in Malaysia. It is the first such chair to be established by a foreign government at any North American university.
The Razak Professor, who is a senior Malaysian scholar selected by the Malaysian Ministry of Education in consultation with the Razak Council and Ohio University, has a two-year residency at Ohio. The Razak Professor conducts seminars for undergraduate and graduate students in his or her respective areas of expertise and organizes an international conference on Southeast Asia in the second year.
The first Razak Professor was Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas. Ohio University is currently hosting its fourteenth Razak professor, Professor Dr Habibah Ashari, a professor of Education from Universiti Teknologi MARA. She is the first professor from UiTM to be appointed as the Tun Abdul Razak Chair-holder, and is only the second woman to be appointed to the prestigious chair in its more than 30 years in existence.