Predicaments of Exile: Challenges for Hong Kong’s Western Diaspora
Monday, 06 October 2025 | 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. | Room 519, Fifth Floor, Kaneff Tower, York University
Peter Baehr (University of South Florida) will give the Eighth Bernard H.K. Luk Memorial Lecture in Hong Kong Studies.
“Even our misfortunes are part of our belongings,” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight, 1931)
Hong Kongers who move to, say, Toronto, London or Taipei, rarely use the word diasporic to describe their condition. The term is not inaccurate. It is just too clinical, too “academic,” to capture the raw emotion of the arrivals. “Exile” is more visceral. Indeed, if “exile is a heavy word” (so says Lokman Tsui), uprooted Hongkongers appear to find it all too apposite.
A problem refers to something capable of a solution. A predicament is something that must be endured. This lecture examines various predicaments—spiritual, intellectual, political—that face Hong Kong’s exile communities today and for the foreseeable future. These include the management of loss, alienation from the homeland (as the years roll on, it becomes less plausible for exiles to speak on behalf of Hongkongers who actually reside in the territory), and the efforts required to remain intellectually independent and truthful within one’s own community; as Simone Weil reminds us: “There is no collective exercise of the intellect.” One further predicament will be examined. It concerns how exile communities are supposed to act in Western states—the exiles’ new home—that increasingly resemble China in their narrative control (propaganda), censorship, restrictions on freedom of movement and of association, and their sheer brutality. COVID-19 was a threshold event; others are likely to follow.
Born in Malaysia, educated in England, Peter Baehr is currently a fellow of the Center for Social and Political Thought, University of South Florida. In previous lives he taught in Hong Kong (for 22 years), and in Coventry and Newfoundland (a decade a piece). Baehr works on the interface of politics, history and sociology, and, particularly, in the areas of political and social thought. His work has been translated into 10 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian. Baehr is an advisor and consultant to Oxford University Press’s Social Science Digital Research initiative. Presently he is writing a political biography of jailed Hong Kong activist, Joshua Wong, and preparing an anthology for Penguin Classics on the history of dictators since the age of the Caesars.
Discussants: Peter Lok (Independent scholar) and Pamela Tsui (University of Toronto)
All are welcome!
In-person attendees can register at this link.
Virtual participants can register at this link.
The Lecture will be followed by the first Hong Kong Studies Meet and Greet event for the 2025–26 academic year. Lunch will be served.
The 2025 lecture is co-presented by the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library at the University of Toronto.
A beloved teacher and colleague, Professor Bernard H. K. Luk (1946–2016) was an internationally recognized authority on the history of Hong Kong. Endowed by Professor Luk’s friend and former student, the Honourable Dr Vivienne Poy, the Bernard H. K. Luk Memorial Lecture in Hong Kong Studies was created in honour of his work. Organized by a group of Hong Kong scholars at York University, the lectures and accompanying events focus on Hong Kong as a distinct society, its influence on the wider world or the experiences of the Hong Kong diaspora.
On 07 October 2025, Professor Baehr will lead a workshop for graduate scholars engaged in research on Hong Kong and its diasporas on the theme of Power, History, Diaspora during his visit to Toronto. Learn more at this link.
