A non-profit civil liberties group based in Philadelphia issued an open letter about a year ago in defense of a student organization suspended by Emerson College in Boston after organization members passed out stickers cryptically critical of China.
The Emerson suspensions are an example of what is happening in universities nationwide to students to dare speak critically of China, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) said in its Oct. 5, 2021 letter.
"Emerson makes laudable commitments to its students' freedom of expression," FIRE's seven-page letter said. "Yet, in response to criticism of a foreign government, Emerson has abandoned these laudable commitments, imposing interim restrictions — which are reserved for an 'imminent' threat to the 'physical, social or emotional well-being' of others — and initiating an investigation."
Members of the student organization Turning Point USA at Emerson College set up a table Sept. 29, 2021, to engage with students. Included in its materials was a sticker reading, "China kinda sus," which has been criticized and condemned, according to the letter.
"A student group at @EmersonCollege was suspended and is under investigation for handing out these stickers critical of the Chinese government," FIRE said in an Oct. 5, 2021, post on Twitter. "Emerson promises free speech, but those promises are kinda 'SUS' — 'suspicious.'"
FIRE is a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization dedicated to the defense and sustainment of individual rights of students and faculty members at American colleges and universities, according to an Oct. 5, 2021, release. Rights include freedom of speech and association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty and sanctity of conscience.
"As shown in our Bill of Rights and upheld by Emerson, the critiquing of a government body whether it be foreign or domestic is a key component of free speech expression," FIRE reported in its letter. "The students handing out said stickers were also notified they could be expelled for merely acting on their own civil rights."
What happened at Emerson is similar to a situation in February, just before the Winter Olympics in Beijing, when students George Washington University put up posters protesting actions by the People's Republic of China's government, as reported by Persuasion. The George Washington University students were angered by the reported imprisonment and execution of Uyghur Muslims, personal freedoms restrictions in Hong Kong and the Chinese government's lack of transparency in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
George Washington University's Chinese Students and Scholars Association demanded the posters be removed and that all responsible students be identified and punished, Persuasion reported. The university's president initially sided with the association and said the posters would be removed and those responsible identified, but he backed down in the face of public outcry and said those who posted the posters would not be punished.
Persuasion also reported about a similar incident in 2019 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, when the Student Union voted to ban McMaster's Chinese Students and Scholars Association from campus. This vote came following association intimidating and surveilling students, as well as one Uyghur refugee, on behalf of Chinese government officials.
Colleges are hesitant to speak out against Chinese student organizations like the Chinese Students and Scholars Association and Confucius Institutes because they don't want to lose funding from said organizations, funding that comes as gifts, donations and research grants, Persuasion reported. U.S. colleges and universities received a little more than $1 billion from China, though that probably is an underestimate, spanning 2015-19.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reported almost 70% of U.S. schools with Confucius Institutes failed to report donated sums exceeding $250,000, according to Persuasion. Officials at the U.S. Department of Education believe unreported foreign donations to be more than $6 billion, with a significant amount coming from the Chinese government.
Academic integrities and freedoms are being compromised as this Chinese money comes with strings attached, according to a nine-page letter from the U.S. Department Education to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in January 2021. The Chinese government approves all speakers, teachers and events, and Chinese teachers are required to sign contracts pledging they will not speak negatively or against China.
Some schools sign agreements stating both American and Chinese laws can and will be applied and many topics are off limits to discussion, the Education Department letter said. Those off-limits topics include Taiwan independence and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. These restrictions are well known to universities because, as a school administrator quoted in the letter said, "you know what you're getting when you're funded by the Chinese government."
