How did Harvard University become the CCP’s overseas party school?
When the U.S. government announced sanctions against Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and eleven senior officials who undermined Hong Kong’s autonomy, she responded that she had no property in the US and did not want to visit the US; so she “sneered at it.” But her son who was studying at Harvard University immediately fled the United States.
Theologian Dr. Chen Zuoren commented: “As an extremely international city, Hong Kong’s crisis affects half of the world. The United States sanctions Hong Kong officials for improperly passing the national security law that violates universal values and completely violates the international commitment of one country two systems. People with empathy and historical common sense can understand this. The United States’ sanctions against Hong Kong officials impact Harvard, because Harvard and the other Ivy League colleges have long been favored by important political leaders in the Third World and Asia, and have become the places for their children to study. Some of these politicians are world-renowned figures, but some come from countries where bad laws, chaos, and corruption prevail. Their people suffer under unjust systems, but the corrupt officials’ children can enjoy the privileged life of an Ivy League education.”
Earlier this year, according to a Wall Street Journal report, in the anti-CCP infiltration wave, the U.S. Congress required six prestigious universities, including Harvard University, to provide all the information on their acceptance of anonymous donations. Soon the fact that these universities have long collected unjust money from authoritarian countries will come to the surface.
Liao Yiwu, a Chinese dissident writer living in German, lamented on Facebook: “Harvard is known as the CCP’s overseas Whampoa Military Academy [1]. After fleeing China in 2011, I traveled to the United States to promote the English version of God Is Red. I was invited by the Fairbank Sinology Center to stay at Harvard for a week. … When I was reciting “The Holocaust”, Wang Dewei [2] was frightened. After a group review by Wang and other professors, my “Lecture plus Reading” video and the interview of me by the school newspaper were blocked from Harvard’s website.”
Liao’s experience is not an isolated case. According to the political news website Washington Freedom Beacon, Teng Biao, a former researcher at the Center for Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy College, told them that in 2015 when he tried to host a panel discussion on Hong Kong protests, the associate dean of Harvard Law School William P. Alford ordered him to cancel the event, claiming that it would “embarrass” the university.
Teng recalled: “He called me to his office and told me that the President of Harvard was about to meet with President Xi Jinping of China. It seemed to the leadership of Harvard that it would be very embarrassing to talk about human rights in China at Harvard right after the President of Harvard returns from China after meeting the President of China.”
Alford confirmed to the Washington Freedom Beacon that he did tell Teng to postpone the event, but claimed that it was his own decision and not at the urging of the Chinese government. He got involved in this matter because he didn’t want to jeopardize Harvard’s China business.
Famous American universities are fascinated by money from China. Universities such as Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publicly protested the US government’s tightening of issuing visas for Chinese students but never protested the Chinese embassy’s directing Chinese students to do whatever they want in the United States. When Wuhan pneumonia (COVID-19) raged in the United States and schools switched to online teaching, the Trump administration announced that it would no longer issue visas to Chinese students studying online. This moved the cheese of these Ivy League schools, and they went to court to sue the US government. President Trump personally retorted: since it is online learning, why do Chinese students need to come to the United States?
A few years ago, the President of Harvard University Lawrence S. Bacow visited China and was received by Xi Jinping. He “discussed education and scientific research cooperation between the US and China and other topics”. Is this a great honor for Harvard?
Xi Jinping, as the “great” leader of a “great” nation, does not need to personally meet a university president, who is a bourgeois scholar of the evil American imperialism. However, Xi’s daughter is a Harvard graduate. As a parent, maybe it is necessary etiquette for him to meet the university president. Their meeting was “extraordinarily cordial”.
President Bacow then visited Peking University and delivered a speech entitled “The Pursuit of Truth and the Mission of Universities”. He used the upcoming centenary celebration of the May Fourth Movement [3] as the opening remarks to point out that this movement that changed Chinese history reflected the declaration of Chinese youth at that time: pursuing Truth and believing Truth has the power to change the future. He praised Peking University’s tradition of freedom of thought and believed that the courage of Peking University’s graduates to promote change was attributed to the vision of then-President Cai Yuanpei a hundred years ago.
In his speech, Bacow recalled the history of cooperation between Harvard University and Chinese universities, and pointed out that “people who pursue and create knowledge always have a kind of mutual care across time and space”, even “under severe economic, political and social conditions, universities can still be a source of strength.” Bacow believes that truth “will be revealed only in discourse and experimentation,” and that “pursuing truth requires courage… In social sciences and humanities, scholars often need to guard against political attacks from all sides.” He pointed out that changing the traditional mode of thinking requires great determination and perseverance, the willingness to welcome opposing views, and the courage to face their own mistakes. “Great universities cultivate these qualities, encourage people to listen, and encourage people to speak. Different ideas can be discussed and debated, but they will not be suppressed or banned.”
The most interesting thing is the closing part of Bacow’s speech. He revealed that his mother was a survivor of Auschwitz, and then quoted a poem by an Uyghur writer Abu Dureim Wutikul: “On the long journey of life, I search for truth. On my way to justice, I think hard. I always look forward to the opportunity to talk and think about what words to use that are full of meaning and charm. Come on, my friends! let us speak freely and express our ideas.”
Bacow referred to the writer who died of illness in 1995 as “China’s great modern poet.” However, he did not mention the poet’s Uyghur identity, let alone the fact that the Chinese government has detained millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps with “Chinese characteristics [4]”, which are called “Vocational Education Training Centers” (i.e. the so-called “re-education camps”).
Apple Daily and other Hong Kong media outlets pointed out in their reports that Bacow used such a subtle way to express the attitude of American intellectuals on sensitive topics regarding China. However, my opinion is completely opposite. My critique of President Bacow’s speech is quite negative: a protest that is not spoken is not a protest, and a truth that is not spoken is not a truth.
Bacow values the face of the CCP and Xi Jinping more than the basic human rights of the persecuted, including Uyghurs. When Bacow was talking and laughing with Xi, did he think that the “student’s parent” sitting opposite him was actually an arrogant and brutal dictator? As a descendant of Jewish concentration camp survivors, why did he ignore the updated version of concentration camps in the Xi era? Abu Dureim Utikul and most of his compatriots praised by Bacow do not agree with the identity of “Chinese” imposed on them by the Chinese government. They were subjected to the same ethnic cleansing as the Jews by the Nazis. The West once again chooses the appeasement policy of no action.
Bacow’s kowtowing in China shows that he lacks the courage to uphold the truth. “Dancing” with the dictator, he once again demonstrated the hypocrisy of the Western leftist intellectuals. When he was praising Cai Yuanpei, the first principal of Peking University, did he know that the highest official of Peking University who accompanied him was the secretary of the Peking University Party Committee, who once was the director of Beijing National Security Bureau?
Bacow must have signed many cooperation agreements with the Chinese government and secured a great source of revenue. He is a profit-only businessman, not an intellectual who walks with the truth. The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University opened the door for the children of China’s rich and powerful and got many undisclosed donations. Critic Li Jie criticized: “The president of Harvard went to Peking University to speak like a brave intellectual and talk about the mission of universities. I want to ask him: Is it also in this mission to cultivate personnel for a certain party? Harvard becoming a branch of the party school of a certain party is an open secret. This is the sign of the total decline of American educational institutions.”
American historian Stephen H. Norwood published his book The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower in 2009. The protagonist of this book is not the universities of Nazi Germany, but the famous universities in the United States. At that time, some presidents, provosts, and deans of a number of top colleges gradually debased their schools to become make-up artists for the Nazi regime.
The motto of Harvard University is Veritas, the goddess of truth in Roman mythology, which means Truth in Latin. But Harvard in the 1930s was the first educational institution to whitewash Nazi Germany. James B. Conant, the then principal of Harvard, was a German expert. After he stepped down as the principal in 1953, he became the highest representative of the Allied Forces in Germany on behalf of the US. In 1955, he was appointed as the American ambassador to West Germany.
However, Norwood pointed out that in the same year Conant became Harvard’s president in 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany. He and his Propaganda Minister Goebbels knew very well that to win the support and sympathy of famous American universities and academic circles is the most effective way to whitewash the Nazis — it is exactly the same as China’s current strategy. As a result, Conant became the target of Nazi’s deception. Conant himself did not like the Nazi regime; but he had a deep affection for Germany, and believed that culture and politics could be separated, which was exactly what Nazi Germany needed. He turned a blind eye to Nazi’s persecution of Jews and refused to criticize Nazi Germany. He even rationalized all Nazi’s actions, believing that Nazis could be justified for the unequal treatment they received after the First World War. He refused to receive Jewish scholars and students who had escaped from Germany, but he frequently hosted Nazi leaders and Hitler’s special envoys.
With the support of Conant, Harvard University expanded the exchange of students with German universities, allowing Nazi youth to speak on American campuses, and also allowing American youth to learn from Nazi Germany. The high-ranking school officials and esteemed scholars had no difficulty to find excuses. They claimed to be engaged in pure academic exchange, even though the Nazi government publicly regarded these exchange students as “political vanguards of the empire.” Politically, Conant also persuaded himself to compromise, believing that the inclusion of Nazi Germany on the world stage is a guarantee for Germany’s peaceful revival. In this regard, commentator Li Zhongzhi pointed out: “This is the same when China opened its doors in the 1970s. Harvard entered China first on behalf of American academia. Doesn’t the legitimacy of the exchanges with China look familiar?”
Historian Liu Zhongjing pointed out that the benefits given by China always have strings attached. When Western universities receive tuition from China, the price they pay is the loss of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Don’t overestimate the goodness of human nature; don’t try to dance with wolves and expect an escape without harm.
Personally, when I left China, I vowed to break with this evil empire. I tried my best not to buy and use products made in China, and no longer use social media platforms, such as WeChat, TikTok, and Taobao, that are monitored by Big Brother. I don’t expect to partake of the slightest share of the market in China. I write for myself and for readers who love freedom. If you have no self-interest, then you are strong. Only when you are separated from China and its shadow can you gain freedom of body and mind. Conversely, if you want to make money from China, you will become enslaved by it.
[1] Whampoa military academy (黄埔军校) was once a famous military academy that graduated many top generals in both the Nationalist Party and the CCP. It is regarded as China’s West Point.
[2] Wang Dewei (王德威) is the Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University.
[3] May Fourth Movement (五四远动) is a cultural and political movement started by a student protect on 5/4/1919. It advocated Science and Democracy as the foundation for a new China. It inspired many later movements including the June Fourth movement which the Chinese government brutally crushed with tanks and machine guns.