Cornell University plans to establish a joint dual-degree program with Peking University. The proposal is currently opposed by some professors who are concerned about the Chinese Communist authorities’ crackdown on academic freedom and the detention of large numbers of Uighurs in Xinjiang, and believe that no new program with Chinese universities should be undertaken at this Time.
Magnus Fiskesjo, who teaches in Cornell’s anthropology department, has a long history of studying China and following the situation in Xinjiang. He told VOA that Cornell should not continue to work with Chinese institutions until human rights issues in China improve.
“We can’t let it be business as usual,” he said, “but if it’s just not possible, the least we can do is not start a new program with China in the current situation.”
The two sides of the partnership are Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration (School of Hotel Management) and Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. The proposal was voted on and approved by Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration last March, but sparked controversy at the university’s Faculty Senate meeting in February.
The university originally intended to present the project to the faculty senate on Feb. 24 and let the senate members vote on it. According to a public meeting chat, the majority of the 70-plus professors who voted on the project felt it was too hasty to vote now, and decided to revisit the issue at a later date.
To date, the professorial senate has not voted on the issue. However, Professor Richard Bensel of Cornell’s English Department, a member of the senate, told Voice of America that while the university is required by rule to make a decision after the senate vote, the senate’s vote is not binding.
He said he has formed a working group with a dozen professors to discuss the topic intensively and hopes to have a formal vote at a meeting at the end of March, but he is also concerned that the university will simply announce it in the next two weeks.
“On a project like this, we can only make suggestions,” Professor Bensal said, “we can’t stop them. While we can condemn it after the fact, we can’t stop it from happening in advance. It’s just my guess, but it’s looking increasingly likely that the university will still run this (project) regardless of what the professors think.”
The program’s proposal indicates that the program is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2022, with an expected enrollment of 60 students in the first year, the vast majority of whom would be mid-level corporate executives from China, with an average age of about 31 and about seven years of work experience. Each cohort will complete all part-time courses over a two-year period, alternating between Beijing and New York State, with Cornell professors also teaching in Beijing. Tuition is $51,000 for the first year, and enrollment increases each year thereafter. Upon graduation, students receive both a master’s degree from Cornell’s School of Hotel Management and an MBA from Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management.
The proposal reads, “By partnering with only the most prestigious universities, this program can help the School of Hotel Administration simultaneously achieve its goals of expanding its global educational footprint and building a top-tier reputation and brand.”
The conflict between economic gain and academic freedom and the defense of human rights
The School of Hotel Administration’s project with BYU treats economic gain as a priority over academic exchange or research, according to Cornell professors
“They emphasize that it’s a dual-degree master’s program and that it’s going to help the university make money,” Professor Bensal said, “and they keep emphasizing the money-making part. There’s not a lot of intellectual exchange or collaborative research component in this program, it’s mostly for making money.”
The proposal for the project states that it will net the university $469,000 in the first year and grow each year.
In public records from Cornell’s faculty senate, Alex Susskind, associate director of the School of Hotel Administration, denied that revenue played a leading role at the Feb. 24 meeting.
It’s not a money-making agreement,” he said. (Making money) is one of the outcomes, and we’re not going to do this at a loss. We also hope that in the future, no new project will operate at a loss. (Making money) is not the whole reason, however, increased revenue and funding is good for everyone.”
Professor Saskin did not return Voice of America’s request for an interview.
In addition to the financial gains, several professors are particularly concerned about the state of academic freedom and human rights in China.
Professor Ma Sizhong of anthropology said the Chinese Communist authorities have tightened their grip on higher Education in recent years, and all academic institutions must follow orders from the authorities.
“In China, no entity can say no to the government; they have to do what the government says,” he said.
Ken Birman, a professor of computer science at Cornell University, is also a member of the professorial senate. In an email to Voice of America, Professor Birman said he supports U.S. professors and students in China to comply with local laws and regulations, but he also wants Cornell to develop policies to ensure that the academic freedom of its China program can be protected.
“This must include the freedom to offer perspectives related to the academic field that, even if they are not recognized by the host country, would be seriously considered in other international contexts. The premise of creating a collaborative program is to understand different perspectives,” he added.
Chinese detention of Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang in recent years is a key reason why the professors oppose the new program with China, where more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are estimated to have been forcibly placed in “re-education camps” by the Communist authorities.
Communist authorities say the purpose of the “re-education camps” is to help participants learn the specialized knowledge needed to find jobs and to remove extremist ideas associated with terrorism. However, media and human rights groups continue to expose abuses at the camps, and many families of detainees have publicly stated that they were never exposed to “extremist ideology,” contradicting the claims of the Chinese authorities. The U.S. State Department recently officially defined China’s actions in Xinjiang as “genocide.
At the Feb. 24 meeting, Professor Saskin of the Hotel School said he was aware of human rights abuses in places like Xinjiang, but that “restricting academic exchanges is not the answer,” according to the transcript.
“Yes, there are a number of problems in that part of the world,” he told the conference, “but tourism and hospitality is one of the biggest parts of the economy there, the part that is growing. We have a dominant position in education in hospitality management, so we want to be part of (that part of the economy).”
He also said that China’s problems are not something Cornell can solve.
He said, “I’m not saying they’re not serious problems, I mean, they existed before we proposed this program and they will still exist after the program is over.”
His statement drew the ire of some professors.
Neil Saccamano, an associate professor of English at Cornell, said at the meeting, according to the record, “I’m concerned about this and the BGSU project, but I’m more concerned about this notion that genocide has nothing to do with us.”
Professor Bensal held a similar view.
He said at the conference, “These are not trivial matters; these are major issues. Just because you ignore it or cover it up, etc., doesn’t mean it goes away.”
Professor Bensal told VOA that he and other professors believe the current state of human rights in Xinjiang is “extremely egregious” and “morally unsupportable.
“(China’s) policies in Xinjiang have been condemned by most, if not all, of the civilized world,” he said.
There are also professors who are disturbed by the sexual assault scandal at BYU, such as Risa Libertitz, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
According to the transcript, she said at the meeting, “Some of the published incidents show that students who report sexual assault are being harassed and threatened, which is quite serious.”
Libertitz did not further explain which incidents she was referring to. She did not return a request for an interview with Voice of America.
In 2018, several BYU alumni reported in real names that Shen Yang, a former BYU associate professor, sexually assaulted an undergraduate student 20 years ago, who eventually committed suicide. Shen Yang called it “malicious slander” and denied the allegations. At the end of that year, China’s Ministry of Education said it had revoked Shen Yang’s title of “Changjiang Scholar” due to problems with teacher ethics.
Yue Xin, a student at Peking University’s School of Foreign Languages, wrote an article saying that he was under constant pressure from Peking University because of the Shenyang incident and was forced to stay Home and unable to return to school. The article was blocked shortly after it was sent.
In a statement provided to the Voice of America, Cornell Provost Michael Kotlikoff said he welcomed the professors’ discussion of the issues, but that he hoped the professorial senate would not focus on whether a specific program should be undertaken, but rather provide guidance that could be applied to all overseas exchange programs.
He also said that several offices of the university administration are reviewing the program to determine whether it gives sufficient protection to academic freedom.
The future of exchanges with China
This is not the first time that Cornell professors have been unhappy about a collaborative program with China.
In 2018, Eli Friedman, a professor at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, terminated a six-year collaborative program with Renmin University of China, citing the university’s harassment and punishment of students who supported the labor movement.
At the time, several students from NPC traveled to Shenzhen to support a local rights movement demanding unionization of some employees of Jiashi Technology. The students were punished by the university for this, appearing on a blacklist established by the university and being monitored by state security officers.
Friedman, who studies international labor issues, told Voice of America at the time, “When I saw Renmin University take action to keep their students from going to Shenzhen, I began to think that this might be an academic freedom issue and something that I had to be concerned about.”
He said the suspension of cooperation is to help Chinese students and scholars exercise their academic freedom, and he cautioned that the outside world needs to revisit its cooperation with China.
“I think it’s important for foreign institutions that engage with China to recognize the new realities we face and to think carefully about how to respond. Stopping cooperation is not for everyone, but I think it’s important to think about how to respond to the changes that are taking place.”
He told the website Inside Higher Ed at the time that when this Cornell-NPC project first began, it was also possible to discuss issues such as worker strikes and negotiations.
“Those kinds of politically sensitive topics don’t seem to be able to be discussed openly in China anymore,” he said.
Friedman told Voice of America that he would not give an interview about Cornell’s new partnership with NPC at this time.
“I think that incident is still on everyone’s mind,” said anthropology professor Sizhong Ma, explaining why some professors would oppose the proposed partnership with Peking University.
Cornell currently has 23 academic exchange programs with China. Ma Si-chung argues that Cornell should suspend all of these programs under the current human rights situation in Xinjiang.
In 2019, he wrote in The Cornell Daily Sun, a student-run, independent school newspaper, “Cornell should suspend all programs related to Chinese universities and conduct a transparent review to determine whether some of these programs that may have provided support for the atrocities that have occurred (in Xinjiang) should be terminated .”
“Genocide is a serious issue,” he told Voice of America, “and we should be standing up and condemning it, not running hotel management exchange programs as if everything is fine. This helps legitimize and legitimize the regime and the country that caused this to happen.”
However, Masezhong is not opposed to recruiting students from China; his biggest concern is how these students will get a safe environment at Cornell where they can speak freely.
“Part of the reason they come to a place like our school is they want to enjoy the freedom to explore, the freedom to try different things, to hear new ideas that they don’t hear back home,” he said.
He is disturbed by the Communist authorities’ tactics of spying on overseas nationals through platforms such as social networking software. The digital surveillance has also been made easier by the online teaching that some schools have adopted because of the new crown Epidemic. During the outbreak, U.S. colleges and universities, including Harvard University and Syracuse University, called for students taking classes in China and Hong Kong to join discussions using anonymity to avoid having their comments recorded by authorities.
“The authoritarian countries they come from track their own nationals, monitor what they say and think, and punish thinking about inappropriate things.” Marcion said, “How we can support these students, we don’t have the answer yet.”
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