MCLC: update on Xia Yeliang

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Kevin Joseph Carrico <carricok at stanford.edu>
Subject: update on Xia Yeliang
***********************************************************

The email shown in the article (see link) shows, as I have long assumed,
that student evaluations and teaching effectiveness were far from a
primary concern for PKU in its decision to fire Xia Yeliang.

Kevin

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

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (1/3/14):
http://chronicle.com/article/Email-Suggests-Embattled/143839/

Email Suggests Embattled Chinese Scholar Was Fired for Political Views
By Karin Fischer

When Xia Yeliang was fired by Peking University this past fall, the
Chinese economist and human-rights campaigner said his dismissal had been
politically motivated. University officials denied the charge, saying that
Mr. Xia was simply a poor teacher.

But an email obtained by The Chronicle and published below suggests that
Mr. Xia's political views may well have played a role in the decision to
terminate his contract at the prestigious university.

The August message—sent to Mr. Xia by Zhang Zheng, the Communist Party
secretary of the university's School of Economics—does not mention the
professor's teaching or scholarship.

Instead, Mr. Zhang appears to warn Mr. Xia about expressing his political
views. Specifically, Mr. Zhang notes the professor's decision to sign an
online petition in support of Xu Zhiyong, a prominent activist who
recently was indicted in connection with his campaigns against corruption
and for social change, including efforts to overturn discriminatory
barriers in education and to demand that government officials publicly
disclose their assets.

"This is not a thing that should be done by an instructor of Peking
University," writes Mr. Zhang, whose role, common at Chinese institutions,
is as both a university administrator and a Communist Party official.
"What were you thinking when you signed the petition?"

Mr. Xia, Mr. Zhang writes, should withdraw his name from the petition and
"give written explanations regarding this issue." He also urges Mr. Xia
not to participate in future protests in support of Mr. Xu.

While at times Mr. Zhang, who takes a conversational tone, characterizes
the email as his personal opinion, elsewhere he writes as "a colleague and
a supervisor in charge." And although he never explicitly links Mr. Xia's
activism to a coming faculty vote on his appointment, Mr. Zhang concludes
the message by reminding him of that pending decision. Two months later,
the faculty voted to dismiss Mr. Xia.

A Classroom Lesson

In the email, Mr. Zhang refers to the professor as a member of the
Communist Party, though Mr. Xia says he resigned from the party in 2008,
the same year he signed Charter 08, a statement that called for democratic
freedoms and human rights in China.

Although the professor, who taught at Peking for more than a decade, has
maintained he was dismissed for his outspokenness, university officials
have said that he was let go for academic reasons and that he had been the
subject of frequent student complaints. Indeed, some of his former
students have told reporters he was a poor teacher who spent class time
talking about his political views, not following the curriculum.

Mr. Xia's firing came amid concerns over a possible crackdown on academic
and journalistic freedoms in China and has led some American faculty
members to question whether their colleges should have ties with
universities in authoritarian nations.

Beginning this month, Mr. Xia will be a visiting associate at the Freedom
Project at Wellesley College; some faculty members at the liberal-arts
college in Massachusetts have been among his most vocal advocates. Mr. Xia
also will hold a permanent appointment at an as-yet-unnamed American
research institution.

Following is an English version of Mr. Zhang's email, translated from the
Chinese. (see link)

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1001932-xia-email.html