The University of Chicago issued a statement on Thursday informing the public that it has decided to “suspend negotiation for the renewal of the agreement for a second term of the Confucius Institute at the University of Chicago.”
In July, trustees at Canada’s largest high school board sought to end the partnership with the institute in response to mounting objections from teachers.
These suspensions are the result of an ongoing protest among faculty in North American colleges and universities that house the Chinese organization of language and cultural learning. In June, the American Association of University Professors urged colleges that operate Confucius Institutes financed by the Chinese government to either scrap their partnership or renegotiate terms to promote transparency and academic integrity.
As a self-proclaimed nonprofit organization, why has the Confucius Institute faced tremendous opposition only 10 years after its first campus was established in North America? In the AAUP’s statement, it accused the Confucius Institutes in about 90 North America colleges of functioning as “an arm of the Chinese state … allowed to ignore academic freedom,” due to the terms of the institutes demanding North American colleges to avoid criticism of the political aims and practices of the Chinese government.
Marshall Sahlins, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, pointed out in a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education that the nondisclosure clause of the institute clouds information that faculty members should know before they get into research and teaching. In fact, faculty members knew little of the establishment of the Confucius Institutes in their universities during the first part of their careers.
Without knowledge or consent from faculty, some higher administrators of universities signed the agreements, which affect curriculums, faculty hiring and research scopes. AAUP accused some colleges of permitting the Confucius Institute to advance the Chinese government’s agenda at the cost of compromising academic integrity.
According to last week’s issue of The Economist, the Confucius Institute at NC State indicated in 2009 that the Dalai Lama visit to the university would cause problems with the Chinese government. NC State later canceled the exiled Tibetan leader’s visit. In this case, the institute acted on behalf of China in an effort to prevent the American public from knowing information not in China’s favor.
All these conflicts between North American colleges and the Confucius Institutes reveal that the Chinese government’s ambitious move to expand soft powers overseas has faced strong criticism and resistance. As China becomes the second-largest economy, the state tries to promote its image in the world by exporting traditional culture and language. But ironically, the government has been promoting something it has always despised and abandoned.
History shows that China’s communists had repeatedly denounced Confucianism as a tool that ancient emperors used to fool the public and thus consolidate their rules. The nature of Confucianism is more about obeying the rulers without complaint than sound practice, in contrast to how the public views it. The communist leaders once urged the Chinese public to destroy thousands of valuable architectures related to Confucianism.
If all the accusations against the Confucius Institute were true, ousting it from American colleges or renegotiating terms should be the right thing to do. Academic integrity and freedom are the core values and interests of academic institutions. They should not be controlled, compromised or manipulated by any person or organization.
Similar entities such as British Council and Alliance Francaise, also funded by the British and French governments, have many partnerships with colleges around the world. But unlike Confucius Institutes, they have their own campuses and do not place restrictive clauses interfering with the academic hiring of colleges. Perhaps the Confucius Institutes should learn something from the British and French, promoting its own culture genuinely by adopting the rules of the host country. Only then could they reach more audiences and avoid stirring up as many controversies as they do now.
