Letters | A question for Hong Kong: after all the sound and fury, what is a university for?
- Amid noisy upheavals on Hong Kong campuses, we should remember the values that a university stands for
- A university must be a house of intellectual and moral repute. It cannot and should not be otherwise
That brings us to the question, what is a university for? A modern university of the new millennium must uphold and, if circumstances so require, defend – several basic universal human values, among which I would include the freedom of speech, democracy, equality, pluralism, and tolerance for and appreciation of differences of all kinds (be they religious, racial, ethnic, class or gender), as well as justice and fairness.
A modern university is there to produce knowledge and to transmit it to the present and future generations through all forms of publications.
I use the word publication broadly, to include a diversity of self-expression, covering books, journal articles and book chapters, as well such diverse activities as teaching, public speaking, articulations through audiovisual media such as theatre, film, radio or television, and so on.
But the accent must first be on the substance, the content, of knowledge as an artefact of research, and then on form, style and taste, considering that style and substance are like the two legs of humans or the two wings of birds, wherein one cannot possibly do without the other.
Conceptualised as such, a university must be a house of intellectual and moral repute; it cannot and should not be otherwise. So, the production and transmission of knowledge must be the university’s primary function. All other functions of the modern university are secondary and are, therefore, supportive.
Management and bureaucracy, marketisation and financial mechanisms, curriculum planning, institutional leadership of all levels – from heads of department to university presidents – exist for one single reason: to aid the university to realise its goals and objectives, a sacred mandate bestowed on it by society.
And the mandate is to produce and to express new knowledge to benefit mankind. It is indeed a heavy burden, certainly not a matter to be taken lightly at all.
Chan Kwok Bun, founder and chairman, Chan Institute of Social Studies (CISS)
