tim's experiment

Interesting piece in Pravda today about the selection of the new president of Lingnan University. This was written by an authoritative source, Bernard Chan, who conveniently for this topic happens to be the Chairman  of the Lingnan University Council. As such, Mr Chan says, he “oversaw” the selection process. Unsurprisingly, in Mr Chan’s view, the process was entirely without fault or flaw. This leaves Mr Chan with the small problem of how to explain the fact that some of the university’s students are unhappy with the appointment. This is easily achieved by accusing some students of giving the media and their fellows a “rather inaccurate version of events”. This is summarised (with the use of the rather ominous weasel word “essentially”) as being that the new president, Leonard Cheng, was chosen “at short notice for his political opinions and that student opinion was never sought”. Mr Chan goes on to claim – though he does not give examples – that there were other “inaccuracies” and then launches into the political stratosphere with the claim that the storm in his particular teacup is symptomatic of “deepening intolerance within the wider community”.

Let me say at this point that I approach this little schemozzle in a spirit of complete impartiality. People whose opinion I respect speak highly of Professor Cheng. Mr Chan seems from his public writings to be intelligent, open-minded and well-intentioned, at least by the standards of Exco and the NPC, on which he sits. And if there is any truth in the rumour that the new president is going to close the Cultural Studies Department that is OK by me. When I hear the words Cultural Studies, to adapt an old joke, I reach for my Browning.

Having said which, it seems that Mr Chan has engaged in the venerable trick of putting words into his opponents’ mouths, which always makes it easier to win an argument. It does not matter too much to anyone whether Mr Chen was chosen “at short notice”. A bad choice made at leisure is still a bad choice. Mr Chan’s account of the selection process suggests a spectacular waste of time and money. The “search committee”  – Heaven forbid that we should restrict our recruitment to people who want the job badly enough to apply for it – started work last November. Unfortunately this is the last date Mr Chan supplies so we do not know how much time it spent on “consulting stakeholders” about the desirable qualities of a new president. It then conducted a tendering exercise to select a “recruitment company”. The company approached 384 potential candidates. All this activity was meaningless. Bear in mind that in selecting a university president the field of serious candidates is quite small. We exclude people who do not have a Chinese surname (rule one: no gwailos), people from the mainland (politically sensitive), and people over 60, as it is embarrassing to appoint someone past the age at which his colleagues are required to retire. This brings the field down to a few people currently working in America and a few people currently doing senior administrative jobs in Hong Kong universities. This is why so many “global searches” for senior university jobs produce such distinctly unglobal results. The serious shortlist had five names on it, which could be considered quite good in the circumstances, and two rounds of interviews got the number down to one. It would be interesting, though no more, to know at what stage Prof Cheng’s name appeared.

The point about this process from the student point of view, though, is that it is all private. This is routinely defended on the grounds that nobody will apply if there is a danger that he will be known to have been rejected. But there it is. All you get is the result. Having a student observer on the selection committee reduces the number of people who are kept in the dark by one, which is not much help. Accusing people who say that “student opinion was never sought” of inaccuracy is a bit rich under these circumstances. OK, one student’s opinion was sought. only a few thousand to go.

Now, having disposed of these irrelevancies, we get down to the nitty gritty, which is the fear that Prof Cheng was chosen because he was one of CY Leung’s ten-man advisory panel before the CE election. Mr Chan says he was not aware of this. Apparently he takes little interest in politics – an unusual trait in an Exco member. He concedes that “some of my colleagues on the search committee” did know. Mr Chan at this point turns to mind-reading, Noone mentioned it because they did not consider it relevant, he says. This is a tricky little number. If the matter was not discussed how do we know people did not consider it relevant? People’s mental processes are not always obvious, even to themselves. Students are I think entitled to feel unreassured.

Mr Chan, possibly sensing that this is not his strongest point, departs hastily for a friendly irrelevance. Is it, he wonders, acceptable that candidates should be ruled out because of their political activities. This is “intolerance”, he says. “Do we want a climate where academics avoid advising politicians for fear of damaging their careers?”

This is standing the argument on its head. Nobody is suggesting that being an adviser to a politician should be a bar to academic preferment. What they are saying is that it should not be a boost to promotion chances either. One is tempted to ask Mr Chan, rhetorically as it were, if it would be acceptable to have a government which distributed jobs to its friends and supporters. But the trouble is that we do have such a government. Numerous people have found their way onto sundry advisory, consultative and indeed decision-making bodies for no visible reason other than that they supported Mr Leung. The consultative machinery has been turned into a retirement pasture for DAB carthorses. It may well be that this deplorable tendency stops at the gates of Lingnan University. but some suspicion is entirely understandable. Mr Chan, who is up to his ears in the establishment, is not, I fear, the man to  allay it.

Nor is his boss. Priceless quote in today’s press from CY Leung “I work in perfect harmony with Mrs Lam, the team of principle officials in the accountability system, and all civil servants”. Come on Mr Leung, give yourself a chance. I am quite prepared to believe that rumours about Carrie Lam being unhappy are exaggerated, but there is no perfection in this world and in large organisations under constant public scrutiny harmony tends to be thin on the ground. Ludicrous levels of optimism not helpful.