Recent Trends in East and West University Governance

Author(s):  
Gabriel Donleavy ◽  
Kuan-Cheng Chen

The universities in Hong Kong grew to have strong autonomy and academic freedom within the British tradition of the state-contracted university. China is now subtly pressuring them to conform to the Chinese HE ideal of the state-controlled hollow type. Tensions result as the incremental adjustments have been perceived by many scholars as subversive. In China a dual leadership system protects both the academic and the Party interests. In Hong Kong such a formula would appear to be in the making over time. There are different implications for the utilitarian sciences and potentially political humanities. The loss of societal openness in Hong Kong is matched by another form of hollowing in the West, where market-funded consumer-driven ‘skills factories’ now host a contest between traditional scholarship and managerialism.

1960 ◽  
Vol 106 (442) ◽  
pp. 114-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Yap

The phenomena of “spirit-communication” in mediumistic trance, of “spirit-possession” and of “demonopathy” are closely related, and known to both East and West. Clinical psychiatrists, however, have taken little interest in them, with the exception of some French and a few Spanish authors. These conditions nevertheless do present themselves to the psychiatrist in many countries and it is misconceived to think that they are to be found only in outlandish cultures, the preserve of the field worker in ethnology. It is true that M. J. Herskovits (1951, 1958) has argued that certain kinds of behaviour categorized in terms of culture-bound concepts cannot be applied to other societies, so that African and Afro-American spirit possession, for example, cannot be compared with apparently similar “psychopathological seizures” in the West. No doubt such behaviour receives different cultural definitions according to their respective backgrounds, but this does not exclude the possibility of a specific psychological mechanism being common to them all.


2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-141
Author(s):  
Michael J Beloff QC

Academic freedom is a concept that has a particular significance in a University, not least in a University, which, uniquely in a British context, prides itself on its independence from the State. My interest in academic freedom was sparked by a set of instructions received in this instance from the Government of Hong Kong.  The issue in the prospective litigation was relatively simple.  The Department of Education had planned some reforms.  As is no more unusual in Hong Kong than it is in England, the proposals met with vocal opposition from certain academics.  A senior civil servant telephoned the head of the faculty of the Hong Kong institution of Education, the focus of the controversy and – it was asserted and indeed found by a Commission of Inquiry (“the Commission”) established to investigate the affair – suggested that the turbulent teachers be disciplined.


Author(s):  
Kate Pride Brown

The conclusion summarizes the findings of the book, focusing upon the interplays of the field of power. These powers ebb and flow in relation to each other, creating interesting opportunities and ambiguities over time. Civil society holds social power, which is threatening to financial and political elites. In Russia, the result is a return of authoritarian state dominance, similar to the Soviet period, but adapted to modern conditions. However, the field of power need not only be dominated by the state. In the West, growing economic inequality could have a similar constraining effect on the field of power as a whole. Because the field is contingent and relational, there is always the opportunity for civil society to find a moment to exert its power. But if one power dominates the field in Russia indefinitely, then it is likely to produce the same deteriorating conditions that faced its Soviet predecessor.


Author(s):  
Rizwana Shamshad

According to the Census of India in 2001, the majority of the Bangladeshi migrants in India reside in West Bengal. So far there has been no anti-Bangladeshi movement like in Assam or state government initiated deportation measures like in Delhi or in West Bengal. This chapter investigates why this is the case, and it explores the factors that did not encourage the people, and the state government of West Bengal, to make Bangladeshi migration an issue. The chapter contributes to the concept ‘Bengaliness’, which is shared by the Bengalis of West Bengal and Bangladesh. What comes out clearly from the West Bengal discourse on Bangladeshi migrants is the ethno-linguistic and historical affinity of Bengalis in general with the Bangladeshis. The chapter also brings out the subtle but powerful cultural marker of Ghoti–Bangal difference that exists between the Bengalis of East and West Bengali origin.


2003 ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
I. Dezhina ◽  
I. Leonov

The article is devoted to the analysis of the changes in economic and legal context for commercial application of intellectual property created under federal budgetary financing. Special attention is given to the role of the state and to comparison of key elements of mechanisms for commercial application of intellectual property that are currently under implementation in Russia and in the West. A number of practical suggestions are presented aimed at improving government stimuli to commercialization of intellectual property created at budgetary expense.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-108
Author(s):  
Ali Alsam

Vision is the science that informs us about the biological and evolutionary algorithms that our eyes, opticnerves and brains have chosen over time to see. This article is an attempt to solve the problem of colour to grey conversion, by borrowing ideas from vision science. We introduce an algorithm that measures contrast along the opponent colour directions and use the results to combine a three dimensional colour space into a grey. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm competes with the state of art algorithms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 42-46
Author(s):  
Barbara Bothová

What is an underground? Is it possible to embed this particular way of life into any definition? After all, even underground did not have the need to define itself at the beginning. The presented text represents a brief reflection of the development of underground in Czechoslovakia; attention is paid to the impulses from the West, which had a significant influence on the underground. The text focuses on the key events that influenced the underground. For example, the “Hairies (Vlasatci)” Action, which took place in 1966, and the State Security activity in Rudolfov in 1974. The event in Rudolfov was an imaginary landmark and led to the writing of a manifesto that came into history as the “Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-2) ◽  
pp. 86-98
Author(s):  
Ivan Popov

The paper deals with the organization and decisions of the conference of the Minister-Presidents of German lands in Munich on June 6-7, 1947, which became the one and only meeting of the heads of the state governments of the western and eastern occupation zones before the division of Germany. The conference was the first experience of national positioning of the regional elite and clearly demonstrated that by the middle of 1947, not only between the allies, but also among German politicians, the incompatibility of perspectives of further constitutional development was existent and all the basic conditions for the division of Germany became ripe. Munich was the last significant demonstration of this disunity and the moment of the final turn towards the three-zone orientation of the West German elite.


2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Hunold

In this essay I examine the dispute between the German GreenParty and some of the country’s environmental nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs) over the March 2001 renewal of rail shipmentsof highly radioactive wastes to Gorleben. My purpose indoing so is to test John Dryzek’s 1996 claim that environmentalistsought to beware of what they wish for concerning inclusion in theliberal democratic state. Inclusion on the wrong terms, arguesDryzek, may prove detrimental to the goals of greening and democratizingpublic policy because such inclusion may compromise thesurvival of a green public sphere that is vital to both. Prospects forecological democracy, understood in terms of strong ecologicalmodernization here, depend on historically conditioned relationshipsbetween the state and the environmental movement that fosterthe emergence and persistence over time of such a public sphere.


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