Resignation of university presidents in Hong Kong: Can politics and education be kept separate?

Another Hong Kong public university is going to have its president changed soon. Just two days after Shyy Wei, president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), announced that he would be leaving his post, Kuo Way, president of City University of Hong Kong (CityU), announced on 11 November that he would be stepping down in 2023 after his five-year term ends.

Matthew Lee Kwok On, vice-president of CityU, confirmed this in an interview on 11 November. He added that as instructed by the university's management board, a selection committee would be set up to launch a global search for Kuo's successor.

Pro-Beijing Hong Kong media Sing Tao Daily reported that it was Kuo's own decision to step down, and that he had already made his request known to the management and dean on several occasions at board and academic affairs meetings.

Sing Tao Daily also said that 70-year-old Kuo hopes to focus on research and other work commitments while he still has the energy to do so. It is clear that Kuo has made up his mind to leave.

In a matter of three days, two Hong Kong university presidents decided to step down. People are wondering if it's all just due to personal reasons or is there other conspiracy theories waiting to be unearthed?

In recent years, Hong Kong's institutions of higher education have come under great scrutiny from the outside world because of the anti-extradition bill protests. Numerous university students participated in street demonstrations, and violent clashes have occurred between students and police on campus.

In these times, as the highest office-holder in their institutions, university presidents frequently walk a tightrope as they come under the media spotlight for their stance on various controversies or their attitudes on the implementation of the Hong Kong national security law.

Coincidentally, both Kuo and Shyy were born and bred in Taiwan, had studied and worked in the US and have a science background.

Kuo received his bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering in 1972 from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and his PhD in engineering in 1980 from Kansas State University. Between 1984 and 1993, he worked at Iowa State University. He went on to the Department of Industrial Engineering and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Texas A&M University and stayed there for 11 years. In 2003, he became dean of the University of Tennessee's College of Engineering.

According to the description on the CityU website, Kuo is a pioneer in reliability research of systems at their infant stage and is renowned for his work in designing the reliability of electronics systems and nuclear energy. He has won numerous awards because of this, and in 2000, 2002, 2007, 2014, and 2021 respectively, he became a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a member of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Engineering, and an international fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

In 2008, Kuo left the US to become president of CityU. He has held the position for three terms and is the university's longest-serving president. During his term, CityU's international rankings rose steadily, Hong Kong's first veterinary college was established, and another campus was also set up in Dongguan. It can be said that Kuo is an outstanding and capable president who successfully increased the renown of CityU.

Shyy's story is similar to Kuo's. After obtaining his bachelor's degree in power mechanical engineering, also from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, he went on to receive his Master of Science and PhD degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan. He then served at a local university in the US. According to the description on the HKUST website, 65-year-old Shyy is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and has received numerous awards for his research.

He joined HKUST in August 2010 as provost and was responsible for the university's academic affairs. He became president of HKUST in September 2018 and his five-year term is due to end in August 2023. However, HKUST announced on 9 November that Shyy has notified the university council that he would resign from his post with effect from 19 October 2022.

In other words, Shyy chose to resign almost one year before his contract is due to expire, and has yet to reveal his reasons for doing so. He said on 9 November, "It is my privilege to call HKUST home during the past 11 plus years. On an excellent foundation laid by our founders and predecessors, and further strengthened by many members and supporters, HKUST's academic standard, campus-wide openness, and institutional expectations continue to sustain and flourish."

HKUST described Shyy as a "visionary educator" who has been "driving changes" in the university, earning wide recognition for HKUST's research capabilities and high assessments from both public and private sectors.

However, the mainland and some members of Hong Kong's pro-establishment camp think that these positive assessments may not be quite objective, especially given that Shyy is thought to have lost some points due to his judgment on political issues.

Why is this so?

The presidents and higher-ups of some Hong Kong universities became embroiled in controversy following the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Some presidents were also attacked by students and protestors because they described the protests as "violent".

Following the storming of the Legislative Council building by Hong Kong protestors on 1 July 2019, numerous university presidents openly condemned the act, with Zhang Xiang, president of The University of Hong Kong (HKU), calling it "destructive". On the other hand, Shyy's position had been much more low profile.

In a statement, Shyy said that while numerous parties called for the condemnation of violence, society should discuss the root of the problem. Following the escalation of the anti-extradition protests, Shyy also seemed to sympathise with the plight of young students.

In the early hours of 4 November 2019, as police were dispersing protestors, HKUST student Chow Tsz-lok fell from a height and died after a few days in hospital. On hearing the news while at a graduation ceremony at HKUST, Shyy halted the proceedings and asked the audience to stand for a minute's silence, during which he wiped away tears with a handkerchief. Soon after proceedings resumed, he called for the ceremony to be simplified so that he could go to the hospital to look in on Chow.

In a subsequent email to the university, Shyy called for a "thorough and independent investigation" into Chow's death, and questioned if police had obstructed ambulances from getting to Chow after he fell. He wrote: "We will be outraged if there is no acceptable explanation offered to us."

Later, before the Hong Kong national security law took effect in July last year, the heads of five Hong Kong universities released a joint statement which conveyed that they understood the need for national security legislation. Shyy did not add his name to the statement, and explained that the national security law was the law, and it was not for him to say whether to support it or not.

Like Shyy, Kuo also did not put his name to the joint statement.

According to reports, Kuo had previously written a book on pedagogy in which he proposed the idea of "soulware", meaning the attitude and professionalism that every lecturer and student should have when doing research. Kuo said that higher education in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China has not reached the international stage due to the lack of soulware. He also stressed that universities should remain politically neutral, and keep politics and education separate.

However, following news that both Kuo and Shyy are stepping down from their positions, it would seem that the vision of keeping politics and education separate is difficult to achieve. Since the anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong, many individuals and incidents in Hong Kong have been magnified and politicised, and the first to be impacted was education.

Ivan Choy Chi-keung, senior lecturer with the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), agrees. In an interview with Ming Pao Daily, he said that being a university head these days is different from ten or 20 years ago, because today they have to address politically sensitive issues.

Choy also said that amid tense cross-strait relations, university heads with a Taiwanese background might face greater pressure. In this context, he mentioned Kuo and Shyy.

He added that soon after Hong Kong's return to mainland China in 1997, it was still possible to hire academics with top qualifications to head universities, including former president of HKU Tsui Lap-Chee, and former HKUST President Tony F. Chan. But today, returning mainland China academics who have studied and worked overseas will probably survive better in the current environment.

Choy explained that this is because they are not conflicted in terms of citizenship or identity, and he forecast that Hong Kong's university heads might be filled by such academics in future.

The fact is, two out of Hong Kong's eight public universities are headed by people with a background in mainland China - Zhang Xiang at HKU, and Teng Jin-guang at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). Zhang is a materials scientist born in Nanjing, Jiangsu who was appointed HKU President in December 2017; Teng was previously the vice-president of Southern University of Science and Technology.

Furthermore, in December last year HKU appointed two academics from Tsinghua University as vice-presidents. One of them, Max Shen - previously a centre director at the Tsinghua-Berkeley Institute - was also rumoured to be a party representative for the centre, which he denied.

In any case, it will get clearer over the next year or so whether the HKU leadership will evolve to become increasingly "mainland Chinese".

But we can be sure that after over a year of anti-extradition protests, Beijing and the Hong Kong government are joining hands to "clean up" Hong Kong's education sector. In Beijing's view, Hong Kong's young people are participating in social movements because the pro-democracy camp has controlled the education sector and rights of speech.

The Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union (HKPTU) was the largest single union in Hong Kong, before it was suddenly dissolved in mid-August, less than two weeks after being denounced in late July as a "malignant tumour" that engaged in anti-China activities, in a move that shocked Hong Kong's education sector and public society.

The HKPTU was a social organisation established in 1973 by teachers of various institutions, with about 95,000 members, half of whom were primary and secondary school teachers.

In early October, the CUHK Student Union (CUSU) also disbanded, while before that, CityU and PolyU announced they would no longer be collecting fees on behalf of their student unions, cutting off their funding.

It is apparent that after the anti-extradition protests, Beijing's thinking in governing Hong Kong is no longer staying out of each other's business, as it used to be. In this larger context, institutions from primary and secondary schools to universities that have stayed politically neutral are no exception, as perhaps illustrated by the departure of Kuo and Shyy.

Let us not forget that in August last year, former CUHK president Joseph Sung announced that he would be dean of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine as well as senior vice-president at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.

At the time, there was speculation that Sung's acceptance of a "demotion" from CUHK president to senior vice-president in Singapore had something to do with the incidents above, despite Sung emphasising that his leaving had little to do with Hong Kong's political environment.

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