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Collision Between Politics and University Autonomy: HKU’s Governance Crisis in PVC Appointment Saga

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Book cover Politics, Managerialism, and University Governance

Part of the book series: Governance and Citizenship in Asia ((GOCIA))

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Abstract

This chapter scrutinizes the first repercussion of Occupy Central on university governance in Hong Kong: a territory-wide controversy over HKU’s appointment of a liberal scholar to a senior management position. It argues that this intramural personnel issue was complicated by the pro-democracy Occupy Central , leaks of confidential information from HKU and a confidential UGC report on the research performance of its public universities, and orchestrated personal and political attacks on the sole internal candidate by pro-establishment and pro-Beijing newspapers. However, HKU council handled these external pressures poorly, using various tactics to delay its consideration for over a year before eventually rejecting the candidate. The leaked reasons for the rejection further revealed two major concerns about the managerial model of university governance: the competing interests among council members, and the dominance and political role of external council members in university governance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Wing-Wah Law

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  1. Wing-Wah Law
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Correspondence to Wing-Wah Law .

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Law, WW. (2019). Collision Between Politics and University Autonomy: HKU’s Governance Crisis in PVC Appointment Saga. In: Politics, Managerialism, and University Governance. Governance and Citizenship in Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7303-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7303-9_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-7302-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-7303-9

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