Monday, June 23, 2014 – 1:07pm
Bob Kapp is right that China has a “marvelous cultural repertoire,” that Americans should learn more about it, that Chinese culture is best learned through Chinese language, that Chinese-language programs in North America need more resources, and that it would be nice if China pitched in.
None of that is the point, of course. What the AAUP objects to, rightly, is the problem of “unacceptable concessions to the political aims and practices of the government of China.”
A few months ago Steven Levine, at the University of Montana, as part of his Tiananmen Initiative Project, wrote to about 200 Confucius Institutes around the world asking what plans they had for marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of June 4, 1989—by any account an important day in modern Chinese history, one that people interested in China should know about. Levine received no responses. Not one. He did hear, informally, that his letter caused consternation on some campuses.
Bob Kapp’s answer to dangers of political interference is that there be “stated commitments” and that if someone “oversteps a line” we fix the problem, “push the reset button,” and move on.
My goodness. Are we still this naïve in our understanding of how self-censorship works? (The view, not the person, is naive.) Do we think it is as open and mechanical as stating commitments, observing lines, and pushing reset buttons?