Violent campus clashes between protesters and police stir fears for Hong Kong universities.

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A protester hurls a lit Molotov cocktail at the police outside Hong Kong Polytechnic University in China, where demonstrations escalated in recent days.Kyodo via AP Images
▼ The once-peaceful protests in Hong Kong over the erosion of the territory’s autonomous status within China and delays in expected democratic reforms escalated last week into pitched battles between protesters and police on multiple university campuses. At one site, several senior school officials who are scientists sought to negotiate a truce amid rubber bullets and the haze of tear gas.
The confrontations wound down early this week, but academics worry about the future of the city’s universities. “The current situation will make it difficult for us to recruit top-quality staff in the future,” says Sun Kwok, a Hong Kong–born astronomer who was dean of science at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) for 10 years. He fears it may also be tough to fill HKU’s graduate schools, where most students come from mainland China or other countries. The science faculty recruits about 120 grad students each year, and filling those slots “might be quite difficult,” says Matthew
Evans, HKU’s dean of science.
Kwok adds that authorities appear to blame university students for instigating the demonstrations. “If this results in increased control by the government on the universities, it could lead to an erosion of academic freedom,” says Kwok, who is now at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
AsSciencewent to press, an estimated 100 hard-core activists remained holed up on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). Calm had returned elsewhere. Scientists and officials at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), HKU, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology say that on their campuses, electrical power and internet service continued, and there were no fires within buildings and no losses of culture collections or lab animals. “We had zero damage to our buildings,” Evans says.
Hong Kong universities had escaped disruption during the massive demonstrations in the city that started in early June, touched off by a proposed bill to ease extradition of suspected criminals to mainland China for trial. The extradition bill was withdrawn on 23 October. But by then, protesters were demanding broader democratic reforms and independent investigations of police brutality. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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