June, 2007

Revelations from the Hong Kong Institute of Education Inquiry

Chan Sze-chai

(The author is a senior lecturer in the Dept. of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University.)

An intranet letter sent to faculty and students of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) by the institute's vice president of academic affairs, Prof. Bernard Luk Hung-kay, on Feb. 4, 2007, exposed serious allegations of interference with the management of the institute by senior officials of the government's Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) and efforts to retaliate against HKIEd academics who had been critical of the Hong Kong government's educational reforms and policies. These attempts to undermine academic freedom in Hong Kong sparked a public outcry, resulting in the creation of a commission of inquiry appointed by Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen about 10 days later. The formal inquiry that began in March ended on June 6.

The inquiry has revealed many problems that should be worrying for anyone who is concerned with freedom in Hong Kong. The first revelation is that we have haughty bureaucrats who do not have the slightest idea of civilised behaviour, who can say blasphemous or threatening words, like rape, and take arbitrary actions but yet demonstrated during the inquiry that they do not have the strength to admit doing so. If they had the basic decency to admit their improper behaviour, they could have saved the government and the public a substantial amount of time and taxpayers' money for an independent inquiry. Rather, their intransigence prodded them to put up a fruitless legal fight, only in the end to be disgraced by the facts.

The second and more important revelation is that such arrogant bureaucrats do not have the slightest idea what is academic freedom and freedom of speech. It should be remembered that Arthur Li Kwok-cheung had been the vice chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) before he became the secretary for education and manpower in 2002. It was unimaginable that after taking the highest EMB post he pressed for the merger of the CUHK and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Early in that push he made public remarks which indicated he believed he had the power to do so and it was not for the staff and students of CUHK and HKUST to oppose. For a former university vice chancellor to think and act in such an authoritarian manner is scandalous. It reveals an appalling lack of respect for academic freedom for someone wielding such power. It was only due to the scale of opposition from the two universities that his effort was unsuccessful. It was then that Li turned his attention to the HKIEd, resulting in the present fiasco.

The third revelation is that EMB bureaucrats did not fulfil their duty in alerting Li, the bureau's most senior official, to the impropriety of such behaviour. Although the inquiry was limited to probing into the actions of Li and his assistant, Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun, the second highest ranking government official in the education sector at the time, it has already been reported that other EMB officials were also involved in various incidents of interference. As for Law, rather than exercising her duty to restrain Li in his attempts to influence and intimidate the management and academic staff at HKIEd, she was seen as too eager to collaborate in that improper endeavour herself. Her careless actions in making phone calls after normal office hours to HKIEd professors, both to reprimand them for their speeches and to demand that staff under them be terminated, will go down in the city's history as a classic case of bureaucratic interference with freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Equally despicable is the refusal of the HKIEd's council to pay for the legal fees incurred during the inquiry of its two most senior employees, namely, its president, Prof. Paul Morris, and its vice president of academic affairs, Prof. Luk. In fact, it was the questionable decision of the council, led by its chairman, Leung Kwok-fai, to discontinue the contract of Morris that ignited the most recent conflict between the HKIEd and senior EMB officials. Leung, in fact, played a role similar to that of the former vice chancellor and pro vice chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, Prof. Cheng Yiu-chung and Prof. Wong Siu-lun, respectively, in their more than willing collaboration in 2000 with a senior aid of then-Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa to pressure a member of the academic staff, Robert Chung Ting-yiu, to stop publishing opinion poll results unfavourable to Tung. Both incidents show that, after many years of evolution, many university administrators have sadly degenerated into compliant collaborators, too willing to follow the cues they get from government officials at the expense of the institutional autonomy they are supposed to uphold. Such revelations are damaging for the reputation of Hong Kong as the most Westernised oriental society, for the revelations have pointed to a far less robust picture of the core values that Hong Kong as a society cherish.

In the past 10 years since the handover, there has been tremendous growth in the bureaucratic power of government officials in all sectors of education, from kindergarten vouchers to various education reforms in primary and secondary schools. In all education reforms and new policy initiatives, there is a consistent and constant disregard of the needs and opinions of frontline workers and recipients, namely, the teachers and students. Moreover, after the uncoupling of university pay systems from the government pay scale and the subjugation of the University Grants Committee (UGC) to the EMB, university education has also suffered a similar fate of bureaucratic oppression from both inside and outside university campuses. The UGC academic performance assessment system has severely curtailed academic freedom and intellectuals' participation in public affairs. Myopic university administrators, under arbitrary funding cuts and manipulation from the UGC, have also shown an increasing tendency to subjugate their own staff in order to cope with the pressure of the commercialisation of higher education. Furthermore, some government officials periodically take matters into their own hands and blatantly interfere in the affairs of individual universities. Even if the more overt kind of interference will subside after this inquiry, constant intrusion by the UGC and university administrators still indicates that academic freedom is not respected in Hong Kong.

(Ed. note: On June 20, the commission of inquiry found that former permanent secretary for education and manpower, Fanny Law, had improperly interfered with academic freedom at HKIEd, and she subsequently resigned from her present position as the commissioner of the Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC). The commission of inquiry found though that the allegations against Arthur Li had not been established.).