Academics' alliance slams 'incredulous' reasons given for rejecting Johannes Chan appointment as HKU pro-vice-chancellor
Group lashes out at 'incredulous' excuses given to deny liberal scholar pro-vice-chancellor role
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.
