The professor should be fired and the university punished (doubtful), but the student was also an idiot to do what he did. It’s not like he was some random guy who just tweeted at China, he lived in wuhan for years and has actual family there now, being critical of a totalitarian government in that scenario is the height of monumental stupidity. It’s ironic that the article paints him as methodological and thoughtful because he seems anything but in his actions.
But nominally, you can be a political fool in Switzerland without professional consequence.[a] It seems he is being forced to play by the social rules of China in Switzerland. It's fair to say his tweets could jeopardize his ability to return to China and secure a professorship or research position, but to suffer professional consequences in Switzerland, in the heart of Europe, for Chinese political incorrectness is unprecedented.
[a] For example, in America you can post on Facebook about MAGA or tweet about BLM and you will rarely if ever lose your job or doctorate candidacy.
You found an incredibly ripe cherry to pluck with this one! Literally anyone with a beef can attempt to derail a hiring decision nowadays. People are getting unhired because someone dug up old Instagram videos where they say the N word while singing rap lyrics as a teenager. It’s absolutely insane, and you cherry picked one example that is not even remotely representative of this phenomenon as a whole.
Chinese government is of course far more authoritarian but it is wise to point out that things have been worsening in US academia over the last couple of years.
My rebuttal would be that in the US there is a strong cultural reaction against such "political correctness", while CCP seems to be doubling down on the necessity of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics with Xi Jinping as the nation's steward.
Only if the post praises BLM and criticizes MAGA... Lots of people have lost their jobs (and even dropped from public funded colleges) because of this. Not sure if you are really not aware of this, or if your comment is not in good faith.
I had a quick search and i only found one case - a Michael J Dale covered in various outlets alleging dismissal for MAGA support back in 2018. However, i cant find that the case actually went to court. It appears Michael has decided against testing his claim in court?
I can find some cases for the opposite - dismissal for criticising president Trimp:
Jeff Klinzman had his day in court and was awarded a payout.
Rob Rogers didn’t go through courts but former employer on record in the Guardian newspaper confirming reason for his dismissal was his criticism of trump.
Craig Silverman again didn’t go via courts but his previous employer confirmed the reason for his shows termination.
Allegations that don’t appear to have gone to court yet:
Cases (as in court cases) are just the easily visible tip of the iceberg. We do not see the aggrieved who did not make their story public for whatever reason.
MAGA proponents are not fools and know when to keep their opinions to themselves, I've noticed. My last company was openly hostile to the last President as a matter of informal policy, and there was much polite nodding in supposed agreement.
> Only if the post praises BLM and criticizes MAGA... Lots of people have lost their jobs (and even dropped from public funded colleges) because of this.
I've never heard of such a thing. Could you give a specific example of these "lots of people"?
Additionally, this framing - of MAGA vs. BLM - is also unreasonable. Hiring processes are by design discriminatory; people don't just hire at random. There's no reason to assume public statements by a candidate that appear to fall in a pro-BLM bucket would be as attractive to the hiring process as statements that fall in a MAGA bucket would be unattractive; those two things likely have nothing to do with each other when it comes to hiring.
In other words, regardless of actually instances of discrimination, this framing looks chosen to try and create or sustain the so-called culture war.
from the context of the article it seems like he's getting his PhD in Chinese studies, and obviously that likely means you will have relations to China, which is what the professor in question was worried about.
It's a little bit like majoring in Iranian studies, insulting the Ayatollah and prophet on Twitter and then being upset when you get barred from the country and people start professionally ditching you. Like, when you pursue an academic career with close ties to a country with a very different political set of values I would assume you understand the kind of diplomatic issues you can run into?
His PhD was about environmental damage in China. That is not something cultural or diplomatic. It does not require close ties with China, though it does help to have access.
Nothing here means you shouldn't criticize China. In fact, the premise of the research becomes moot if you cannot criticize China.
it evidently is or else we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. Everything in China is political which everyone knows who has ever interacted with Chinese institutions. (which you probably will if you study environmental damage in China).
It's really not that surprising that a professor is not going to associate with someone who posts vaguely racist cartoons to his ten followers on twitter if it costs them their visa.
If you really want a career that involves studying aspects of a foreign culture you better learn to navigate the waters or you won't have a career, that's not really a new thing. If you're an archaeologist you probably won't be one for long if you insult the governments that let you access your dig sites, is that really a scandal?
I think it actually requires both diplomacy and cultural awareness.
If you want to study the ‘damage’ that a country is doing, it seems like it would serve you well to avoid ruffling too many feathers so that you can do your work in peace and without being accused of bias.
I mean it sort of is though. There are no elections in China, the CCP has total control over the government. You can claim that a country isn't defined by its government, but many would disagree.
There is so much more to China and the people who come from there than its communism, even though its communism calls the shots. That's sort of how this mess of Cross-Strait relations came about. What is China and what is not is by no means a resolved question. Let's hope for a peaceful resolution.
As I said in another comment, in the U.S., if you’re an African American studies PhD student and you post a racist cartoon depicting black stereotypes, it’s not hard to imagine losing your doctorate candidacy.
Especially in America's highly controversial political climate today. This story would be much easier to parse if he had merely criticized the CCP, rather than reposting the cartoon. We should remember this incident and see if the pattern will repeat in the future, or if this was a case of inappropriate behavior that was fairly disciplined.
Considering that the UBS put their chief economist on a leave of absence (initially they communicated that he had been let go of completly), for calling pigs in china "chinese pigs", I think ever mentioning that topic alone would already be to much.
I would assume in the first case, like the previous example, you would lose the Ph.D. But the second example with bears (assuming Pooh) is not a fair comparison to hate speech.
What are you even talking about? Posting racist cartoon depicting stereotypes about Chinese is exactly what the Chinese studies PhD student did, so this is an exact parallel.
Do you have a copy of the cartoon? The article intimated that it had possibly exaggerated Asiatic features. It did not indicate that the cartoon’s actual intent was to lampoon an entire race, which is what would traditionally qualify as racism (although I know the goalposts have been moved quite a bit).
I don’t have a copy of the cartoon, and I haven’t read anything about this story other than what’s in the article. But that the article is very vague about the cartoon is rather telling in itself: if it is innocuous enough why isn’t it included or at least described in more detail as ammunition? The author wasn’t shy about including the full tweet they’d like you to believe was the smoking gun. It’s also impossible to tell “actual intent” even if the image is provided; pushing a political message is not at all mutually exclusive with contempt against an entire people.
Anyway, this jollybean poster apparently also doesn’t have a copy and posted in bad faith just to mislead people who didn’t actually read the article, or only read what the author intended to highlight. Really tried of this bad faith engagement.
I posted multiple quotes from the very article being discussed as a reply to another misinformation comment from you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28097088 If this very one-sided article says it was racist, it was, or they would have used it as ammunition instead of being as vague as possible.
At this point it is very clear you’re deliberately pushing bs in bad faith. You should be ashamed of yourself.
It had winnie the poo memes afaik. It would be like posting the drawn image of obama as a monkey (which caused a stir a while ago) while criticizing his policies in the US.
Wait a second. Is the argument here that comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh is "racist"? As opposed to just, say, offensive to a very powerful fat man? Wow, OK. I think we have a new standard for the use of racism accusations to censor people.
Of course it is racist. I'm not sure if it was the Winnie the pooh, I assumed it was due to its prevalence and how the article described it as a cartoon depicting stereotyped features (yellow skin).
Maybe you read about the incident elsewhere but TFA vaguely hints at a drawing of a Chinese person with offensively stereotyped features, which doesn’t sound compatible with your Winnie the Pooh theory.
In any case TFA deliberately made it hard for readers to form their own judgement.
He was getting a PhD from a university in China though? He was deregistered as a PhD candidate in his former university as well. If you're on a Chinese government scholarship and visa and your livelihood depends on that (as well as new family ties), why would you criticize the Chinese government? His research and life was tied to China. I would imagine you'd want to play by their social rules then.
Couple of professors who are unfriendly to black people got fired too, not saying its wrong, but its not that different in this case. Someone got offended, someone got fired.
You can definitely get in massive trouble in the US and put your job in danger. Your superiors just have to massively disagree, or you might be posting about sensitive topics like Israel or the military.
Both BLM and MAGA are incredibly mainstream movements.
Maybe not lose your job, but the University of California will prevent you from getting one, as they require all job candidates to commit to and have a history of advancing diversity. Conflicting political posts would probably harm your ability to pass this first step of the job application process.
I doubt the UCA is actually going to check. But it us still horrible that a university is enacting such a political requirement.
It feels to me much more aimed at being able to fire people when controversy arrises than something used to actively screen new hires. Though perhaps the self-selection is also meant as a goal.
> It feels to me much more aimed at being able to fire people when controversy arrises than something used to actively screen new hires.
If you mean my speculation about political posts, then you're probably right. But if you mean the diversity pledge screening, then you couldn't be more wrong. From another article on the same subject:
> eight different departments affiliated with the life sciences used a diversity rubric to weed out applicants for positions. This was the first step: In one example, of a pool of 894 candidates was narrowed down to 214 based solely on how convincing their plans to spread diversity were.
The student partner was living in Wuhan. The partner beg them to stop, and they didn’t. Its partner is lucky not to be sent to a “re-education” camp.
We all agree that the fact that this can happen is wrong, but what the student did is not just wishful thinking, they put their loved ones at risk. That’s very disrespectful of other people lives.
A PhD proofs that one is capable of conducting independent research on some topic. This story proofs that they are definitely not capable of conducting and directing independent research on China, so it makes no sense for this student to be on a PhD program anyways. They should have known better, since they were “China experts”, but they didn’t.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
I think calling for the professors dismissal in this instance is completely unwarranted. Not only do we have only one side of the story here, we don't even know what those tweets were, or if there's anything else at play here, nor is the relationship very clear here (the supposed student was actually studying in china for 3 years? What exactly was the relationship with the Swiss professor then?) Additionally, it's just not acceptable to demand others suffer the consequences for fights you picked, no matter the justification.
I mean, there is clearly an argument that the funding, influence and prestige the Confucius institute grants also allows them influence, and that that influence is perhaps unwanted. But if that's the conclusion, we should demand a counter-pressure by parties that are better able to withstand chinese pressure, e.g. perhaps some coalition of European countries that reject the institute whole cloth. Unfortunately, I doubt the EU can do much here because it's already been infiltrated by governments that clearly appear to be under Chinese influence, such as Hungary, and it needs unanimity for most action; and of course Switzerland isn't even in the EU.
To put it another way: I have doubts a country like Switzerland would dare to pick this fight with China alone - but if so, how absurdly unreasonable is it to expect an individual professor to, without any kind of policy. The whole issue puts the wisdom of Switzerland's idea of independence at risk.
Also, I no matter how you reject China's actions, I think it's morally pretty questionable to put your partner's family at risk, even if you think you're in the right, even if you are.
The EU can take action against China and it has recently took soft action by updating its customs code¹. However, Germany is not particulary keen on picking fights with China, because they export vehicles to the Chinese market. Let's just say there is not enough political will to do anything like this at this time. There's also the separate issue of banning Huawei 5G network carrier equipment in the EU due to data being leaked to China.
Let us check it again: I understand it is more like "There exist operators in Swiss education who are in a weak position, e.g. for the need to obtain visa which could be critical to perform their job".
It is not that there is not an influence (it could be China as much as many other entities), but given the above it is transversal to the job.
CCP influence in foreign universities is definitely a thing, at least under Xi (mostly aimed at Mainland Chinese students studying abroad, not Westerners directly).
It got to the point where a special taskforce was set up specifically to tackle this issue here in Australia; I'd be surprised if we were the only country experiencing this.
Totally agree - he is studying china, lived in china, has a chinese girlfriend in china who advised him to stop the critical tweets…and he just kept doing it anyway???
“His girlfriend was shocked when she saw some of the tweets. Talking with him on the telephone, she begged him to stop. Not because she necessarily disagreed with anything. But because she was worried about retaliation by the Chinese government. «I'm in Switzerland, not China,» Gerber replied. «I can say what I want here.»
Sorry to sound harsh, but I would argue that level of naivety / ignorance pretty much should disqualify him from a PhD in anything related to modern day China.
I say that jeopardizing the safety of your loved one and her family back in China after they specifically ask you not to take some action, and while you are safely abroad is not a good example of moral courage
There are countries in the world who do not have a patriot act or similar. They can argue in place of the USA that the government of the country discussed in the article is totalitarian.
The story goes: dude studies in china. Is in Switzerland bc of corona. Starts posting anti CCP on Twitter. Posts racist picture, some chinese PhD student in Canada sees it. Emails his supervisor. Supervisor sees it and decides that she doesn't want to work with someone who posts racist pictures (for the wrong reason not bc of the picture but because she fears she will get excluded if she publishes with him). This is all very plausible imo if one could actually see the picture which conveniently isn't included.
This is not saying anything about the CCPs control over research which is a very serious topic. As long as I don't see the relevant picture. It's a researcher not wanting to publish with a someone who posts racist stuff.
It is very convenient to only mention the racist picture and not also mention the accusation of the Chinese Coronavirus cover-up.
The latter is just as bad for the CCP and would also lead to the events we have seen.
But it's obvious that when you are doing Chinese studies paid by a Chinese university, then you're not free from repercussions when you tweet from a European country.
So yes, China is influencing European universities and the west appears to accept this.
The CCP can block the supervisor's future Chinese visa prospects if she were somehow linked to the PhD candidate. Hence she disowned him and utilized the university machinery to achieve it. That's literally the premise of the article.
Except that's what the professor thought would happen, not what actually did. If we're to act on hypothetical then where would we draw the line? The US asks visa applicants for all of their social media accounts, seems pretty standard to me.
That's what the professor thought would happen, based on historical precedent. She used that precedent as a basis to proactively act against the candidate.
