Colonial privilege, academic freedom and chicken feet: reflections of a British veteran HKU professor
Douglas Kerr is bidding farewell to the city he has called home for 38 years. He gives his take on where Hong Kong and its university system are headed
Veteran English professor Douglas Kerr never really felt comfortable working in a colony, so when British rule ended in Hong Kong he felt a sense of relief.
“It was a bit of an embarrassment for people like me to be looked at as beneficiaries of an unfair colonial system,” he told City Weekend last month, on the day he left for London after 38 years in Hong Kong.
“So for me personally, it was very nice to no longer work in a colony, or to teach a colonial language.”
For Kerr, who was head of the English department at the University of Hong Kong in 1997, there were “accrued advantages” of the handover other than just a clearer conscience. He was able to tap into “far more talent from the mainland than ever before”.
Kerr arrived in Hong Kong in 1979 at 27, fresh from the University of Warwick where he received a doctorate. The timing allowed him to experience the city for 18 years before, and 20 years after, the handover, which he saw as no more than “a symbolic act”.
“For those of us who worked in Hong Kong during the handover, there was nothing really that dramatic about 1997. The changes associated with the resumption of sovereignty began in the 1980s, they continued through 1997, and are still continuing,” he said.
