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Albert Einstein once said: "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." This adage is especially pertinent to politics. Locked away in an ivory tower and far removed from the political and social realities, academics are not necessarily good government policy advisers.

In the West, the selection of scholars of remarkable erudition as close advisers to political leaders is not a must. Instead, it is common for the heads of governments to appoint trusted election campaign strategists to be their senior policy advisers responsible for formulating the highest level government policies and strategic initiatives. A telling example was George W. Bush's gifted campaign strategist, Carl Rove, who, albeit allegedly devious and ruthless, was appointed senior adviser and deputy chief of staff during the Bush administration. Credited with 2000 and 2004 successful presidential campaigns, Rove was referred to as "the Architect" of Bush's 2004 victory speech. Some historians have even dubbed him "Bush's brain".

Another revealing example was David Axelord, who had been a first-rate campaign adviser to President Barack Obama. In 2008, Obama named Axelrod as a senior adviser to his administration. However, neither Rove nor Axelrod were scholars. Rove was even a college dropout. It was not their academic standards, but their unswerving loyalty, political acumen and unrivalled knowledge of government policies that motivate presidents to appoint them to be their major policy advisers.

Sadly, in Hong Kong, there is a misguided belief that only scholars are qualified to be government policy advisers and that only academic research by university dons can facilitate the formulation of government policy.

Recently the Central Policy Unit (CPU), a government department, came under savage fire from some lawmakers, scholars and journalists. Earlier last week, in his Apple Daily Column, Lam Pun-lee, a former associate professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, lambasted Shiu Sin-por, head of the CPU, for appointing Sophia Kao Ching-Chi as a full-time CPU member. Lam railed against Kao: "Devoid of a research degree and research experience, Sophia Kao is not up to the academic standard of a research assistant. How can she be qualified for the job of a member of the CPU ?"

Indifferent to the history of the CPU and misrepresenting the CPU as an academic institute, Lam's accusation is absurd and misleading. By nature, the CPU has never been an academic institute, but a policy unit. This was also the case during the colonial period. Interviewed by Next magazine, Leo Goodstadt, the colonial government's chief policy adviser from 1989 to 1997, recently disclosed: "the former governor, David Wilson, founded the CPU in the hope of recruiting the elite who could really come up with realistic solutions to current problems... academics are usually not good at government policy, because scholarly works are not solutions to genuine problems..." Like Shiu, Goodstadt therefore appointed a number of business leaders without academic research experience as the full-time members of the CPU, including the obscure but brilliant ones like Barry Cheung.

Despite their different political stances, both Shiu and Goodstadt rightly have the same conviction that the CPU should not be an academic ivory tower out of touch with the social reality. Instead, with the aid of leaders of different fields, it should be a unit which is able of shaping pragmatic policies cutting across all sides of the social spectrum. Given this purpose, it is utterly reasonable for Shiu to appoint some trusted business leaders without academic track records, like Kao, to join the CPU.

On top of the appointment of Kao, recent changes in Public Policy Research Funding Scheme caused a backlash among some anti-establishment academics. Launched by the government in 2005 to promote public policy research in government-funded universities, this scheme funding has been allocated from the CPU to the Research Grants Council (RGC) annually for the administration of the scheme. Aware of the inapplicability of some past academic research by government-funded universities for the formulation of government policy, the CPU recently decided to replace the RGC to assume the administration of the scheme, extending the eligibility criteria from government-funded universities to private think tanks and self-financed tertiary institutions.

This sensible decision has nevertheless prompted some overbearing scholars and opposition lawmakers such as Kenneth Chan Ka-lok to accuse the CPU of planning to finance some private pro-government think-tanks, thus lowering the quality of public policy research. Chan's accusation is an epitome of academics' conceit and exclusiveness. To protect their vested interests, some of our government-funded university professors are reluctant to compete with private think-tanks for research funding. To monopolize public policy research, they even put forth the falsehood that private think-tanks are incapable of producing good-quality public policy research and of offering sound advice to the government.

Over the past decade, some so-called distinguished scholars have very often misread the public mood, giving misleading and unrealistic advice to the government. Only by inviting the elites in different fields to participate in the CPU projects, can we break up the scholarly monopoly of public policy research in Hong Kong.

The author is a lecturer at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a Yau Tsim Mong District Councillor.

(HK Edition 12/06/2012 page3)