China: Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has fired an associate professor who researched the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Ms. Rowena He has been fired from her university position after the city’s immigration authorities declined to extend her visa.
Ms. He has previously received outstanding teaching awards in 2020 and 2021. Ms. He is also the author of the well-received 2014 book Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, and has published numerous articles in Chinese and English on China’s democracy movement and its aftermath.
CUHK stated that Ms. He had been let go when she failed to secure an employment visa. The Hong Kong Professor is currently listed as on leave from the university after receiving a fellowship from the National Humanities Center in the United States.
“Visa decisions are a matter for the Immigration Department and the university is unable to influence visa outcomes, and nor is it aware of the circumstances of individual cases,” a university spokesperson commented
Ms. Sophie Richardson, former China director at Human Rights Watch described Ms. He as an “extraordinary scholar-teacher” and added that her visa denial was “further evidence” of Chinese government “censorship and revisionism in academia”.
The Hong Kong government has denied visas to its foreign critics including journalists working for the Financial Times and the Economist and activists including Benedict Rogers, the co-founder of the advocacy group Hong Kong Watch.
Before joining the CUHK history department, Ms. He previously taught at Harvard University, Wellesley College, and Saint Michael’s College.
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