Group lashes out at 'incredulous' excuses given to deny liberal scholar pro-vice-chancellor role
JOYCE NGjoyce.ng@scmp.com
PUBLISHED : Friday, 09 October, 2015, 12:12am
UPDATED : Friday, 09 October, 2015, 12:12am
Ip Kin-yuen at the inauguration of the concern group yesterday. Photo: Felix Wong
More than 90 scholars from the city's tertiary institutions have formed an alliance to defend academic freedom in light of an appointment controversy at the University of Hong Kong.
Announcing their launch on Thursday, the Scholars' Alliance for Academic Freedom called on their peers to "organise, strategise, unite and fight back" at political interference.
The group hit out at members of HKU's governing council for giving "incredulous" reasons for rejecting liberal scholar Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun's candidacy for a key managerial post, such as Chan's lack of a doctorate degree.
"If mainland officials want to 'decolonise' the city, they should start by scrapping the arrangement that made the governor - now the chief executive - the default chancellor of all public universities. The law should be put in a museum," Professor Stephen Chan Ching-kiu, a cultural scholar at Lingnan University, said.
The council's move to defer - and eventually deny - Johannes Chan's appointment is seen by some staff and pan-democrats as a political move to punish him for his pro-democracy views and close ties with colleague Benny Tai Yiu-ting, a founder of the Occupy Central movement.
Dora Choi Po-king, an associate professor of education at Chinese University, said Hong Kong had seen incidents of encroachment on academic freedom in the past decade, and each time an investigation was held it found government officials or university bosses accountable.
The alliance will examine cases where violation of academic freedom is suspected, review modes of governance in different institutions and suggest improvements, organise forums for relevant discussions, and study ways to protect academic freedom used around the world.
Meanwhile, Ip Kin-yuen, convenor of an HKU alumni concern group, said university council chairman Leong Che-hung had declined his invitation to attend a forum to explain the decision to reject Chan's candidacy.
Also yesterday, the Justice Alliance, a group that was against the Occupy movement, had about 20 members protesting on the HKU campus, demanding a dialogue with vice-chancellor Professor Peter Mathieson.
They said Mathieson was like "morphine", poisoning the university as he had not terminated the appointment of Chan and Tai over a donation controversy.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1865362/academics-alliance-slams-incredulous-reasons
