MCLC: another professor fired

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Kevin Joseph Carrico <carricok at stanford.edu>
Subject: another professor fired
***********************************************************

Another professor with presumably "negative student evaluations" (see
second to last paragraph). Also relates to the "seven silences" discussed
on this list earlier this year.

Kevin

===========================================================

Source: NYT (12/10/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/world/asia/chinese-professor-who-advocate
d-free-speech-is-fired.html

Chinese Professor Who Advocated Free Speech Is Fired
By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — Officials at one of China’s most respected universities have
reportedly fired an outspoken legal scholar for advocating free speech and
for repeatedly calling on the government to abide by its own Constitution.

 Zhang Xuezhong, who teaches at the East China University of Political
Science and Law in Shanghai, said administrators notified him on Monday
that he would be dismissed after he refused to apologize for writings that
championed the protections guaranteed by China’s Constitution. Professor
Zhang’s teaching privileges were temporarily suspended in August after the
publication of an article detailing the Communist Party’s growing
hostility to the nation’s legal system.

“I told them I had made no mistakes whatsoever,” he said in a phone
interview on Tuesday. “I’m just a university faculty member who expresses
his own opinions, thoughts and proposals, which is absolutely my right.
This is an out-and-out witch hunt.”

University officials did not respond to telephone calls and a fax seeking
comment. But in an internal school memo that Professor Zhang obtained and
circulated online Tuesday, officials also cited an e-book he wrote this
year called “New Common Sense: The Nature and Consequences of One-Party
Dictatorship.” According to the notice, Mr. Zhang violated university
rules by “forcibly disseminating his political views among the faculty and
using his status as a teacher to spread his political views among
students.”

The dismissal is sure to send a chill through Chinese academia, which has
come under increasing pressure amid an ideological campaign that seeks to
rein in liberalism and promote obedience to the ruling Communist Party. At
a time when American educational institutions are rushing to open Chinese
branches and build partnerships with local universities, Professor Zhang’s
removal is also likely to draw renewed attention to the political
constraints that hamper open discourse at even the most respected Chinese
schools.

In October, Peking University fired a noted economist who is a vociferous
critic of single-party rule. Administrators claimed that their refusal to
renew the contract of the professor, Xia Yeliang, was based on poor
teaching and his failure to keep up the school’s publishing requirements.

Mr. Xia, a vocal champion of multiparty elections, said he had been
repeatedly warned to tamp down his politically charged words and activism.

Mr. Xia’s dismissal reverberated well beyond China, especially on American
and European campuses that share academic programs with Peking University,
considered one of the nation’s most pre-eminent educational institutions.
Despite some initial hand-wringing, notably at Wellesley College and the
London School of Economics, none of the schools altered their relationship
with Peking University.

On its website, East China University of Political Science and Law,
commonly known as Hua Zheng, boasts of nearly three dozen international
partnerships, including an exchange program with Willamette University in
Oregon and another with the University of Wisconsin, which offers a joint
master’s of law with the school.

Professor Zhang, 47, has had run-ins with school administrators over his
writings, but their unhappiness with him deepened last May after he
publicized the contents of a secret document, produced by the central
government, detailing seven subjects that are not allowed to be discussed
in Chinese classrooms. The banned topics included democracy, freedom of
speech and past mistakes of the Communist Party.

But it was his defense of China’s 1982 Constitution that ran head-on into
a campaign by the Chinese leadership that seeks to bolster the supremacy
of the party. After assuming power in November 2012, President Xi Jinping
initially expressed support for the rule of law, but in recent months the
state-run media has sought to demonize constitutionalism as a Western plot
to overthrow the party.

Professor Zhang’s undoing appears to be an article he published online in
June titled “The Origin and the Perils of the Anti-Constitutionalism
Campaign in 2013.” A few days later, he said, four school officials
summoned him for a meeting to warn him that the article violated both the
nation’s code of teaching ethics and the Chinese Constitution.

Professor Zhang appears to have been a fairly popular lecturer at the
school. On Pinglaoshi, a website where students can anonymously evaluate
their teachers, Professor Zhang received a rating of 4.6 on a scale of 5,
with most of the 21 posts favorable. “We admire and respect you,” said one
post from September. “You are China’s backbone.” A post from August said,
“You are a true warrior with integrity.”

During his meeting with school officials on Monday, Professor Zhang, who
is also a practicing rights lawyer, said he did not put up much of a
fight. Instead, he warned the dean of the law school that his dismissal
would do lasting harm to the school’s image. “The impacts to me will be
short-lived because I can find another job, but the stain on the school’s
reputation will be permanent,” he said he told the dean. “You can never
wipe it clean.”

Patrick Zuo contributed research.