The #UmbrellaMovement Teach-In:

WHEN: October 28 (Tuesday), 4:30-7 pm
WHERE: Nissan Lecture Theatre, St. Antony’s College
WHAT: The events of September 26 to 28 that sparked the so-called “Umbrella Movement” seemed to many outside of Hong Kong to appear out of nowhere. After the deployment of tear gas and pepper spray by the city’s police force, images of Hong Kong’s citizens were plastered on television screens around the world. While the scale of this event was beyond anyone’s imagination and could not have been predicted, the tensions that led to its precipitation have existed well before the international community turned its attention to the city. This teach-in, led by post-graduate students at Oxford with research interests in Hong Kong, aims to do two things: first to investigate the causes of the ongoing events, and second, to discover the alternate futures possible for Hong Kong now.

INITIAL SPEAKERS:
We will begin our conversation with brief 5-10 minute presentations from the following in order to ground our general discussion in facts.
+ CHARLES MOK (Legislative Council Member, Info Tech representative via web conference): Update from Hong Kong
+ LARRY AU (Global Governance & Diplomacy, MSc candidate): A History of Protests and Social Mobilizations, 2003-2013: Four Cases
+ STEPH CHEN ZOU (Contemporary Chinese Studies, MSc candidate): Voices of Hong Kong’s Protest
+ MATHIAS CHEUNG (Barrister, BCL graduate): Civil Disobedience and Civic Nomination: Twin Guardians of the Rule of Law
+ SONIA LAM (Anthropology, DPhil candidate): Notes from the Field: Youth Perceptions of, and Critiques towards, the Political Domain
+ MEI LING YOUNG (International Relations, MPhil candidate): “Asia’s World City” and Its Discontents: Structural Violence and the Articulation of Identity in Hong Kong

TEACH-IN STATEMENT:
The first teach-in was conducted at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1965 during the Vietnam War. Since then, teach-ins have been deployed in response to moments of crises to address issues of public importance. In invoking the term, we acknowledge that in novel moments like this, expertise is rare. Instead, what we can do is to leverage local knowledge to position ourselves to better understand the issues at hand, while taking advantage of the collective wisdom and creativity in the room to help tackle the challenges we face. The result is a discussion that is both open-format and participant-driven that welcomes all views.