Drew Pavlou, the University of Queensland (UQ) student facing persecution for standing against the University’s deep China links (see here, here and here), has launched a petition on Change.org to sack UQ’s compromised Vice Chancellor, Peter Høj.
In the petition Pavlou explains Høj’s wholly inappropriate ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP):
We are petitioning UQ’s Chancellor Peter Varghese to sack UQ’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Peter Høj, over his wholly inappropriate ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Høj was until recently a senior consultant to Beijing’s global Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban) and a member of its powerful governing council, which is responsible for more than 500 institutes operating in universities and schools across the world. In 2015, Høj received the Most Outstanding Individual of the Year Award from Hanban ”for his contribution, guidance and support to the UQ Confucius Institute and the Confucius Institute global network.” Four Corners revealed that Høj only stepped down from Hanban’s board after being advised he would have to declare it under Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme.
Høj’s close relationship to Beijing has informed his atrocious response to CCP influence on campus. When pro-Hong Kong students were assaulted by CCP thugs campus, he refused to condemn the nationalists that intitiated the violence. In fact, his university administration harrassed pro-democracy students and threatened their continued student enrolment. When Transparency 4 UQ students sought to hold a protest on July 31st, they were called into a security meeting with the administration, given a list of draconian conditions under which the university would allow the protest to be held (including a condition that it be held in a non-descript campus location behind a car park), and told that their future enrolments were tied to their compliance with said conditions. Later, when Brisbane’s PRC Consul General issued a statement endorsing the violence and labelling pro-Hong Kong students seperatists, a charge that carries the death penalty in China, Høj refused to sack Xu Jie as a Visiting Professor at UQ. He refused to sack a Professor advocating and endorsing violent attacks on students exercising their rights to free speech and free assembly.
Ultimately, Høj lied to students about the extent of CCP influence on campus. He told Four Corners that UQ’s Confucius Institute had never been involved in course design, when the Sydney Morning Herald has shown that up to four UQ courses have been funded and designed by the Confucius Institute. One of these courses, ECON3820, seeks to legitimise the detention of up to one million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps as a ”legal response to terrorism.”
Høj lied to Four Corners, saying UQ had no current links to Professor Heng Tao Shen, a leading figure in the development of AI surveillance technology used by the Chinese government to round up Uyghur Muslims. As of the time of writing, Professor Heng Tao Shen remains listed as an Honourary UQ Professor on UQ’s website.
Students will not be safe while Høj remans Vice-Chancellor. Values we hold dear at UQ such as free speech are not safe while Høj remans Vice-Chancellor. If UQ’s Chancellor wants to rectify this situation, he has no choice but to sack Vice-Chancellor Peter Høj over his wholly inappropriate ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
At the time of writing, 1,658 people had signed the petition to sack Høj with a target of 2,500 signatures.
