You’ll never see nationwide campus protests over this:
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng claims he is being booted from his apartment and his fellowship at New York University this month because of NYU’s kowtowing to the Chinese government. The school protests mightily, claiming that it has lavished resources on Chen and never intended for his fellowship — granted after he sought refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing — to last for more than a year.
Nobody seems to notice that universities are partnering with nations that treat their citizens far worse than the Israelis treat the Palestinians.
In September a joint venture between Yale and Singapore will open on a campus built and paid for by that autocracy. Then there are the Persian Gulf states. The United Arab Emirates hosts branches of Paris’s Sorbonne and the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in addition to NYU. While funding jihadists in Syria and Libya, Qatar is on its way to spending $33 billion on an “education city” hosting offshoots of Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, Texas A&M and Carnegie Mellon.
Funny how the feminists and gay rights students go all out on Israel, but don’t care that their colleges are partnering with countries in which homosexuality is illegal, women cannot vote (or drive!). Here’s what they do in the host countries in response to the millions of oil dollars being spent:
A year later, a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education visited Abu Dhabi and reported that professors “use caution in broaching topics such as AIDS and prostitution; the status of migrant laborers; Israel and the Holocaust; and domestic politics and corruption. Any critical discussion of the Emirates’ ruling families is an obvious no-go zone.”
Hypocrisy, thy name is academia. Remember this the next time you read about “Israel Apartheid Week” on college campuses, and make a quick check on the campus website to see which repressive dictatorship that particular campus is partnering with. It’ll make for some interesting arguments.