The ongoing protests and unrest in Hong Kong resonate worldwide, and everyone is welcome to discuss them at a public forum next week at Brandon University.

Drs. Alison Marshall and Allison McCulloch will address the legal and political landscape in Hong Kong, including legislative changes that sparked the original protests, the results of the recent elections, and the Chinese response.

Dr. Marshall, a Professor of Religion at BU who works primarily in the areas of Chinese religion and history, will lead the forum under a title of “Riots, rights and ritual in the era of Xi Jinping: Understanding the Hong Kong protests.”

“I see the Hong Kong Protests as a politico-religious issue with international ramifications.  At their very core is the question of what constitutes future legal rights of Hong Kongers post-2047 and under the complete rule of China,” Dr. Marshall said. “Historically China has been governed not by individual rights and freedoms (including the right to protest) but by Emperors and rituals to promote collective harmony. With the elimination of term limits for the Chinese president, China, though a communist nation, has in many ways now returned to imperial systems of governance.”

She will be joined by Dr. McCulloch, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Brandon University. Dr. McCulloch is also the editor-in-chief of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics and her research is broadly focused on politics in deeply divided societies.

Dr. McCulloch will offer a comparative perspective on the protests. “From Hong Kong to Lebanon to Sudan to Chile, street protests and mass mobilizations have been distinctive features of political life in 2019,” Dr. McCulloch said. “What motivates similar responses in these different places? Do the protests converge or diverge in terms of strategies, tactics, and prospects of success? What comparative lessons about the utility of mass protest might we draw from these experiences?”

The forum will be held the evening of Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020, from 7–9 p.m. in Room 212 of Brandon University’s Clark Hall.