With the Beijing Olympics only four months away, protests aimed the Chinese regime’s abuses and its support for the genocidal Sudanese government are mounting. Reporters Without Borders sells shirts with interlocked handcuffs in place of the Olympic rings, and Steven Spielberg left his job as an artistic adviser to the games over China’s indifference to the crisis in Darfur. Now is the perfect time for Georgetown to evaluate its own ties to two Chinese universities.
About a dozen Georgetown professors currently work at Fudan University, teaching and developing everything from exchange programs to ways to share technology over long distances, according to Samuel Robfogel, the Director of International Initiatives.
Georgetown’s ties to the Central Party School, a university that has produced much of China’s top leadership, are more worrisome. Connections with China are especially embarrassing for a Jesuit university committed to interreligious understanding.
“Though constitutionally recognized, religious freedom is accorded little respect in China,” according to a 2007 Freedom House report, which also noted that 50 members of an underground Christian church were imprisoned and had their church demolished just for practicing their faith.
Georgetown’s freedom to speak out on these issues, however, is limited by its connections to Chinese universities. In exchange for the right to collaborate with Chinese researchers, Georgetown must self-censor its institutional voice.
“[Religious repression] is not really much of an issue and I don’t think it needs to be. Not if Georgetown doesn’t push its religious identity or a diplomatic issue like Tibet, and not if Georgetown’s goal is to establish a global university,” theology professor Francisca Cho said.
Georgetown’s Jesuit identity is a valuable part of what it offers the global academic community. If Georgetown casts aside its professed moral leanings for the sole purpose of solidifying ties with a nation with burgeoning research influence, it betrays the very tradition that it tells students sets it apart from peer universities.
“If we ever felt that academic freedom in our program was suppressed in a way that didn’t allow us to be the Georgetown University that we wanted to be it would be a matter of concern,” Robfogel said. Still, Georgetown’s ability to condemn one of the most brutal regimes in the world is automatically restricted by its connection to Chinese schools.
With China showing no sign of liberalizing on human rights issues, Georgetown may soon be forced to choose between speaking on its values or staying silent to preserve ties with China. Georgetown should make sure research concerns don’t get in the way of speaking the truth.
