MCLC: NYU booting Chen Guangcheng

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42 at cornell.edu>
Subject: NYU booting Chen Guangcheng
***************************************************

fyi, on Chen Guangcheng, see below, . . . and the near-simultaneous(same
day!) Chinese translation, published at:

http://www.wenxuecity.com/news/2013/06/13/2452647.html

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

Source: NY Post (6/13/13):
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/nyu_has_bad_case_of_china_syndrome_vfH5N
C733GMAUeoFimKdbK

NYU booting blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng amid Shanghai
expansion:
sources
By JAMES COVERT

NYU isn’t letting a pesky thing like human rights stand in the way of its
expansion in China.

The university has booted a blind Chinese political dissident from its
campus under pressure from the Communist government as it builds a coveted
branch in Shanghai, sources told The Post.

Chen Guangcheng has been at NYU since May 2012, when he made a dramatic
escape from his oppressive homeland with the help of Hillary Rodham
Clinton.
But school brass has told him to get out by the end of this month, the
sources said.

Chen’s presence at the school didn’t sit well with the Chinese bureaucrats
who signed off on the permits for NYU’s expansion there, the sources said.

“The big problem is that NYU is very compromised by the fact they are
working very closely with the Chinese to establish a university,” according
to one New York-based professor familiar with Chen’s situation, who spoke
on
the condition of anonymity.

“That’s their liability,” the source said. “Otherwise, they would be much
less constrained on issues like freedom of speech.”

The outspoken Chen — whose many supporters include actor Christian Bale,
who
tried to visit him in China with a TV crew in 2011 — recently inflamed
Chinese authorities again when he agreed to visit its archenemy Taiwan in
the coming weeks, a source said.

NYU officials claim that Chen was never meant to stay there long-term and
that the politics of the new Shanghai campus had nothing to do with his
Ouster.

“If there were outside pressure, why would we have taken him in the first
place when his plight was on every front page in the world?” spokesman John
Beckman said in a statement to The Post.

Beckman said NYU got approval for its Shanghai campus last fall, several
months after Chen arrived.

Scrambling to find a new home, Chen is currently in discussions to move to
Fordham Law School. The talks are still ongoing, a spokesman there
Confirmed.

A self-taught lawyer who spent years in prison and under house arrest in
China, Chen sought refuge at the US Embassy in Beijing in April 2011. He
pleaded with then-Secretary of State Clinton to help him, and ultimately
landed at NYU, where he studied as a special student in law.

Chen’s move to NYU to avert a diplomatic crisis was brokered by prominent
NYU law professor and China expert Jerome Cohen.

But insiders said NYU has felt itself increasingly vulnerable to pressure
from China as the Shanghai campus project moves forward.

“Apart from the initial press hoopla, [Chen] really hasn’t had any kind of
profile at NYU this year,” said Andrew Ross, an NYU professor of social and
cultural studies.

Ordinarily, he noted, Chen “would have done seminars; he would have done
panel discussions.”

Chen has had little communication with NYU President John Sexton, who has
been spearheading the school’s expansion into Shanghai and Abu Dhabi, a
source said.

Chen couldn’t be reached for comment.

Cohen was in China and also couldn’t be reached.

jcovert at nypost.com