Follow The (Chinese) Money: The Tiananmen Anniversary And A Scandalous Silence On U.S. Campuses In the countdown to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, American universities are emitting an unfamiliar signal: silence. Although for generations they have prided themselves on their passionate, and vociferous, commitment to free speech, lately they have been censoring their comments on the People’s Republic of China. And few topics are more taboo than the Tiananmen massacre, perpetrated on June 4, 1989. At the bottom of it all is money — what else? In one of the most scandalous sell-outs in intellectual history, more and more universities now accept funding from the Beijing Ministry of Education. All this is the more remarkable for the fact that it has hitherto been almost unheard of for universities anywhere in the world to accept money from foreign governments. It all began very quietly a decade ago when the ministry launched the first of its so-called Confucius Institutes. These organizations promote cultural understanding around the world. At least that is their stated mission. Although the Confucius Institute phenomenon has been little studied by America’s uninquisitive media, it ranks as one of history’s most successful propaganda gambits. Already nearly 1,100 Confucius Institutes and associated Confucius Classrooms have been established in no less than 120 countries – and nowhere has the program been more successful than in the United States. According to Chinese press reports, more than 220,000 students in the United States now study in Confucius Institute classes. At first sight the Confucius Institutes seem no more controversial than other cultural initiatives such as the British Council, France’s Alliance Française, and Germany’s Goethe-Institut, all of which similarly promote their nations’ culture abroad. A crucial difference, however, is that, whereas the others have relatively modest agendas little concerned with getting under the cultural skin of foreign nations, an explicit objective of the Confucius Institutes is to become embedded in top foreign universities, particularly American ones. Generally each Confucius Institute is a constituent element in a host university. Not only does it piggyback on that university’s reputation, thereby attracting a higher caliber of student, but it pushes for an increasing voice in the host university’s overall administrative arrangements. It doesn’t help that Confucius Institutes are noted for heavy-handed central control. Besides funding, the Beijing ministry typically provides teaching materials. It also specifies curricula and, in many cases, even appoints professors – thus ensuring absolute orthodoxy on “sensitive issues.” Perhaps most alarmingly, as the Chicago University professor Marshall Sahlins has documented, Beijing specifies that its contracts with host universities be kept secret. In the words of the prominent American China watcher, Steven Mosher, the presence on a campus of a Confucius Institute has “a chilling effect on frank discussion of human rights abuses in general, and the Tiananmen Massacre in particular.” Mosher, who is the author of Hegemon: China’s Plan to Dominate Asia and the World, adds: “There have been cases where Beijing has tried to directly influence the curricula and lectures. More common is self-censorship, where school administrators and professors, not wanting to jeopardize this source of funding, tend to avoid subjects that would upset Beijing. The point of Confucius Institutes is to subvert, coopt, and ultimately control Western academic discourse on matters pertaining to China.” A similar point has been made by Jörg-Meinhard Rudolph, a Sinologist at the East Asia Institute at Ludwigshafen University in Germany. He notes that Confucius Institutes in Germany avoid discussion of Tibet, Taiwan and the Tiananmen massacre. Even Rudolph, however, may understate the problem. According to Fabrice De Pierrebourg, a French espionage authority, many employees of the Confucius Institutes have backgrounds in Chinese security agencies. Writing with a Canadian expert Michel Juneau-Katsuya, he has suggested that the institutes are concerned not only to promote propaganda but to control Chinese students abroad and to recruit spies among both China’s foreign diaspora and sympathetic foreigners. How could American universities have allowed themselves to become embroiled with such a controversial phenomenon? How indeed. What is not in dispute is that more than ninety American universities now host Confucius Institutes – and are therefore on Beijing’s pay-roll. It is time to name these universities. As listed at the Confucius Institute website (and seemingly reflecting Chinese order not conventional English-language alphabetical order), they are: University of Maryland San Francisco State University College of William & Mary University of Kansas University of Hawaii at Manoa University of Massachusetts Boston University of Iowa Michigan State University Pace University University of Oklahoma Purdue University University of Missouri North Carolina State University Bryant University University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Davis University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Tulane University Portland State University University of Rhode Island Community College of Denver New Mexico State University University of Nebraska-Lincoln University of Pittsburgh Arizona State University University of Oregon University of Memphis Wayne State University Rutgers University of Central Arkansas Valparaiso University Miami University Confucius Institute in Indianapolis University of Wisconsin-Platteville Texas A&M University Troy University University of Utah University of Arizona Xavier University of Louisiana Houston Independent School District Broward County Public Schools East Central Ohio Educational Service Center Colorado State University Auburn University at Montgomery Old Dominion University Central Connecticut Sate University Texas Southern University University of Texas at Dallas Webster University University of South Florida University of Minnesota Confucius Institute in Atlanta University of Akron University of Montana University of South Carolina Cleveland State University Kennesaw State University Pfeiffer University San Diego State University University of Toledo Alfred University Stony Brook University George Mason University Presbyterian College University of Michigan Western Michigan University Confucius Institute of the State of Washington George Washington University University of Idaho University of Southern Maine University of West Florida Prairie View A&M University University at Albany, State University of New York Dickinson State University St. Cloud State University Georgia Regents University Miami Dade College Middle Tennessee University University of Tennessee Wesleyan College State College of Optometry, State University of New York Confucius Institute in Chicago Confucius Institute for Business at State University of New York Columbia University State University of New York at Buffalo University of Texas at San Antonio Confucius Institute of Chinese Opera at the State University of New York at Binghamton Stanford University Pennsylvania State University West Kentucky University University of Kentucky University of Delaware University of New Hampshire Georgia State University University of Chicago University of Alaska Anchorage forbes/sites/eamonnfingleton/2014/06/01/follow-the-chinese-money-the-tienanmen-anniversary-and-a-strange-silence-on-u-s-campuses/
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:32:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015