[Forbes]
By Eamonn Fingleton
At 83, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins is a veteran of many controversies, but nothing has prepared him for the scale of his current confrontation. The issue at stake is nothing less than American intellectual freedom, and no opponent comes more formidable: the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Sahlins is trying to roll back the advance of so-called Confucius Institutes, which are Beijing-funded organizations that have rapidly come to dominate the China studies field at universities around the world.
Launched in 2004, the Confucius Institute program has proved particularly successful in the United States. Although hitherto virtually unpublicized outside academic circles, the program has now established “partnerships” with more than 90 American universities.
The program’s details vary slightly between different host institutions, but the basic concept is that Beijing provides a wagon-load of cash for staff salaries. With negligible exceptions, both teachers and administrators are Chinese citizens and are — in reality if not in name — Beijing appointees. Beijing even provides teaching materials and sets curriculums. Presto! A host university can have a ready-made China studies department almost overnight. Virtually its only obligation is to provide some real estate and keep the lights on.
Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and this applies as much in Sino-American relations as anywhere else. In return for Beijing’s largesse, host universities are expected to “relax” their commitment to scholarly truth. Thus on everything from the Dalai Lama to forced organ transplants, from the Uighur people to Falungong, Confucius Institutes hew closely to the Beijing line. Although most Confucius Institutes have hitherto concentrated mainly on teaching Chinese culture and the Chinese language, some observers believe that Beijing’s main long-run objectives are to influence how the Chinese economic and political systems are seen, and to identify early and advance the careers of young China watchers whose views are helpful to Beijing. As Sahlins is the first to admit, there have been relatively few reported instances of Beijing crudely gagging anyone. But this is merely because gagging is unnecessary. Instead in a process best described as reverse convergence, American institutions are increasingly accommodating themselves to Chinese values. In this instance the relevant value is self-censorship, which is now spreading rapidly in American academia. For further information on the Confucius Institute program’s compatibility problem with American values, see previous commentaries here and here.
Sahlins, who is an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago and achieved prominence in a past life as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war, has been playing a decisive role in rallying academia. He has finally begun to achieve traction. As he points out, as recently as a year ago, the presence of Confucius Institutes on American campuses was unknown even to most teaching staff at the universities concerned. Thus Confucius Institutes were established everywhere from Stanford to Columbia with virtually no discussion about the implications for academic freedom.
Now largely thanks to Sahlins’ leadership, academic staff at many universities have begun agitating to rid campuses of the phenomenon. Even among universities that have so far held out, academic staff are generally much better informed and more vigilant against stealth attempts by university administrators to embrace the program. Sahlins and his supporters scored a major success last month when the American Association of University Professors, with 47,000 members, came out in his favor. Suddenly a development that had previously been largely been ignored by the press made the pages of both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Meanwhile Sahlins authored a widely noted commentary in the prestigious Chronicle of Higher Education. The article has won outspoken support from among others the prominent University of Pennsylvania-based Sinologist Arthur Waldron.
University of Chicago in winter: chilly outlook for free speech. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Why is this fight so important? Because this time Beijing has recklessly overreached. With reasonable luck, pressure from an outraged American public will reach such a pitch that shame-faced universities will shut these institutes down. Such a roll-back would provide a much needed victory for an increasingly dejected American public that has long since come to consider constant PRC expansionism an inevitability. What is clear is that universities that have signed on to Beijing’s agenda have much to be ashamed about. For a start there is the fact that contracts establishing Confucius Institutes are almost invariably secret — Beijing insists on it and, in direct contravention of the American spirit of openness, countless U.S. universities have acquiesced.
Interestingly Sahlins has had no record of long-term interest in China. So why his temerity in entering a debate that is not central to his field? He emphasizes that he is not motivated by antipathy towards the PR, the Chinese people, or their brand of communism. Rather he is concerned simply to defend academic freedom in the United States. He adds that he has felt obligated to step into the breach in part because many China scholars have felt pressured to keep their heads down. “The understandable reticence of China scholars with ongoing research interests in China to become engaged in criticism of the Confucius Institute project makes it necessary for people like me to take up these essentially domestic, U.S. issues of academic integrity,” he comments.
Postscript as of July 19: Early critics of this commentary have tried to fault it on political correctness grounds. The issue here is not political correctness but free speech. The threat to the American tradition of free speech is manifest in at least three key ways:
1. Long-time American Sinologists have been bullied into silence on the Confucius Institute program for fear of losing their right to travel to China and to do research there.
2. American academics who teach in Confucius Institutes have been brow-beaten into silence on China’s record on human rights and other controversial issues.
3. Universities with Confucius Institutes have been induced to show “discretion” by shunning people considered persona non grata in Beijing such as the Dalai Lama and top Taiwanese officials.
Eamonn Fingleton is the author of In the Jaws of the Dragon: America’s Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008)
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