'A deliberate attempt to vilify': University of Hong Kong scholar Yash Ghai's full statement in support of Johannes Chan

University of Hong Kong emeritus professor of law Yash Ghai issued an extensive statement articulating his deep dismay over the reasons Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun was declined an appointment as a university pro-vice-chancellor. The full text, below, was first given to and reported here in response to enquiries by the Post. Ghai is an expert on constitutional and human rights law and once served as a special representative to the UN.

Ghai's statement

“I was shocked to learn that the Council of Hong Kong University has rejected Professor Johannes [Chan’s] nomination as the University's Pro-Vice Chancellor. The reasons given by the Council are spurious and totally unbecoming the Council.

“I was Professor Chan's colleague for several years at the Faculty of Law at HKU. We are both public law teachers and collaborated on several research projects. He is also a distinguished lawyer who has participated in several leading cases on constitutional and administrative law.

“It is absurd to say that he is not qualified to ‘process’ job applications because he does not have a PhD. Some of the world's leading law professors and scholars do not have a PhD degree. This is the case also at Hong Kong's own distinguished universities, including HKU and Chinese University of Hong Kong. Certainly in my period at the HKU, the appointments boards usually had only a minority of members with PhDs. When I was law student, first at Oxford, and then Harvard for graduate studies, not one of my teachers had a PhD! Even my own study for the Ph D degree at Oxford was supervised by a professor who had merely a BA – and was acknowledged as one the most distinguished British professors of public law.

READ MORE: University of Hong Kong council never stooped so low, says leading international scholar on criticism of Johannes Chan

“To say that Professor Chan has seldom published in academic journal or is seldom the ‘key author of the publication’ is a deliberate attempt to vilify him. I collaborated with him in writing in and editing two books, one on human rights in Hong Kong, following the adoption by the Legco of international human rights, and the other on the decision of the Court of Final Appeal in the right of abode case, soon after the Basic Law came into force. Chan edited most of the chapters, co-authored one with me, and  one on his own, in the first of these books. In the second book, he took responsibility for editing contributions in Chinese language, and wrote a chapter himself. Both these books were well received and provoked considerable debate--as a good book should. Two years ago in a book that I edited with Professor Simon Young, on the first 13  years of the Court of Final Appeal and that of CJ Andrew Li, Chan contributed an excellent chapter on public law. He has published articles in well known law journals, in Hong Kong and abroad.