The Eighth Bernard H.K. Luk Memorial Lecture in Hong Kong Studies with Dr. Peter Baehr, Center for Social and Political Thought, University of South Florida.
About the Lecture
Date: Monday, 6 October 2025
Time: 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EST
Location: Room 519, Fifth Floor, Kaneff Tower, York University
Hongkongers who move to Toronto, London, or Taipei rarely describe their condition as “diasporic.” The term is not inaccurate, but it feels too clinical, too academic, to capture the raw emotion of displacement. “Exile” feels more visceral. This lecture will explore the predicaments—spiritual, intellectual, and political—that Hong Kong’s exile communities face today and in the foreseeable future. These include coping with loss, managing alienation from the homeland, and sustaining intellectual independence within one’s own community. Another predicament concerns how exile communities should act in Western states—their new homes—that increasingly resemble China in their control of narratives, censorship, and restrictions on freedom of movement and association. COVID-19 marked a threshold event; others are likely to follow.
This year’s lecture is co-presented by York Center for Asian Research and Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library at the University of Toronto. The lecture will be followed by the first Hong Kong Studies Meet and Greet of the 2025–26 academic year. Lunch will be served.
About the Speaker
Dr. Peter Baehr was born in Malaysia and educated in England. He is currently a fellow at the University of South Florida’s Center for Social and Political Thought. Previously, he taught for 22 years in Hong Kong and for a decade each in Coventry and Newfoundland. His work lies at the intersection of politics, history, and sociology, and has been translated into ten languages. He is presently writing a political biography of jailed Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong and preparing a Penguin Classics anthology on the history of dictators since the Caesars.
Discussants: Dr. Peter Lok (Independent Scholar) and Pamela Tsui (University of Toronto)