Hypocritical as he always is, the former many Hong Kong University's Chancellor Chris Patten has written publicly to condemn theChief Executive from acting as university chancellors; whilst Patten himself had not only agreed to become but had also required all publicly funded universities in Hong Kong to install the governor as their chancellor. Patten, was the chancellor to so many Hong Kong universities whilst he was the colonial governor. The idea of relinquishment from chancellorship could not have seriously come across Patten's mind and he was quite happily enjoying the glamour and admiration on him sitting on the chancellor's chair.

In "The Closing of the Academic Mind" in project-syndicate.org,Patten said he did protested "that it would surely be better for the universities to choose their own constitutional heads. But the universities would not allow me to resign gracefully". Putting the blame on the universities now for his own inaction is simply disgraceful. Patten was extremely active and instrumental in fouling any smooth transition of sovereignty with Beijing. He had all the time and energy to orchestrate a wide scale step-by-step political reform of the legislative council and the district council to upset institutional continuity across the reversion of Hong Kong to the Mainland China, but had no time to sign off a one page letter to resign as chancellor. Had he be so loathe of the idea of governor-chancellor, he made no attempt whatsoever to revise the mechanism or to propose amendment to legislation that made him chancellor. In fact, "for five years I enjoyed the experience of giving tens of thousands of students their degrees", Patten continued in his article. Patten, either let the glory blinded his conscience, or honestly believed that governor-chancellorship was quite alright!

Absurd as he always is, Patten further wrote that, “in Hong Kong, the autonomy of universities and free speech itself, guaranteed in the city’s Basic Law and the 50-year treaty between Britain and China on the city’s status, are under threat. The rationale seems to be that, because students strongly supported the pro-democracy protests in 2014,
the universities where they study should be brought to heel. So the city’s government blunders away, stirring up trouble, clearly on the orders of the government in Beijing.”

Professor Peter Mathieson, the current Vice Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, also a true-blue British, is far more reasonable and fair when he said, “[the universities] do not however have complete institutional autonomy and nor can we expect it. We are a
publicly funded institution and it is entirely appropriate that we are responsible to the public, and hence to the government that represents them, to assess, justify and adjust our activities according to societal impact and need.” The reality is that although Hong Kong universities do enjoy institutional autonomy, this is by no means an absolute form of
autonomy. It would be irresponsible to suggest that Hong Kong universities should be permitted to do so as a means to safeguard against allegations of academic freedom being at risk. This point must be stressed even more so, when Professor Peter Mathieson also confirmed, that universities in the UK, the US, Canada, Japan and in Korea do not
have complete institutional autonomy.

Student Representative in breach of confidentiality covenanted with the university by revealing confidential discussions to the media; swamped the council meeting room to stop council members from conducting its business; pushing a council member to fall on his knees injuring him and hindering ambulance rescue thereafter; ganging up outside council meeting room refusing to let council members leave, swearing and vilifying them with obscene language; so as to coerce council to promote an anti-establishment professor to be the vice chancellor. If Patten sees these political and public security chaos as part of university autonomy and being vilified as part of free speech, then the Oxford University he is now chancellor of, clearly falls below that standard!