Opinion | No place for ethnic profiling of academics, whether in Hong Kong or US universities
- Talk of a ‘mainlandisation’ of academics in Hong Kong is baseless and only hurts the intellectual vitality and dedication of the research enterprise
- Recent developments in the US should serve as a warning: government overreach can damage academic careers and the functioning of universities
The simple reason is that academic appointments in Hong Kong are based on performance, and not ethnicity, nationality, gender or religion. Anyone who has served on a search and recruitment committee would confirm it, as I can. This is also backed up by data from an international study of the academic profession in 20 university systems, in which more Hong Kong academics agreed – more than those from other systems – that appointments and resources were made depending on performance.
The University of Hong Kong – the city’s premier higher education establishment – is ranked year after year as the most international university in the world, which some contend is because non-local academics from the Chinese mainland count as international. In fact, the vast majority of them earned their doctorates overseas. That adds to the kind of diversity that universities in Hong Kong are known for in their staffing profiles.
