26 July 2020  Issue No: 608

Hong Kong’s academic success is quite remarkable for its size and its higher education’s USP has been its openness, internationalisation and cosmopolitanism. Could all that be about to change with the imposition of the new security law and what will be the wider impact?

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Members of the European Parliament have vowed to find ways to defend Horizon Europe, the European Union’s flagship research programme, from deep and ‘dangerous’ cuts imposed to fund the EU’s COVID-19 recovery programme and wider budget, and fight severe restrictions on the budget for Erasmus+.

There are three main features of the value chain in academic research and publishing – quality, the editorial process and impact – yet all are problematic, particularly for those in certain regions of the world, when it comes to the service provided to society.

The disruption caused by pandemic lockdowns affected day-to-day university work and research, but COVID-19’s impact on all sectors of society has opened the window to changes in research towards tackling societal challenges that require a longer perspective and an interdisciplinary approach.

Japan is taking new steps to safeguard advanced research, including tightening the screening of foreign students and researchers to prevent leaks to foreign countries of advanced technologies, particularly those with possible military applications. Visas for foreign researchers will be more closely reviewed.

There is no such thing as a nationalist university because universities in their essence are outward-looking. But if leaders with nationalist agendas prevail, universities will be reduced to nationalist organisations and the space for individual and community self-determination will be restricted dramatically.

Two of the six university teachers sentenced to life imprisonment by a Cameroonian military tribunal “for acts of secession” took part earlier this month in United Nations-sponsored talks aimed at negotiating a ceasefire to the three-year-long conflict engulfing Anglophone Cameroon which has claimed more than 3,000 lives.