Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty
The Cornell chapter of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) is circulating a petition demanding that the Ivy League university move forward with its proposed dual degree program with China’s Peking University, despite significant pushback from the Faculty Senate and Student Assembly.
The CCP funded group, composed of Chinese nationals, states:
“We sincerely hope that Cornell can carry out mutually beneficial cooperation with China, and avoid ideological conflicts, political disagreements and other factors affecting pure academic exchanges.”
The petition makes no mention of China’s economic espionage, influence campaign, or cyber attacks against the United States. It also ignores China’s ongoing genoicide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang, its persecution of Christians, and its imprisonment of political dissidents in Hong Kong.
The statement from CSSA goes on to falsely accuse the West of “creating” the Xinjiang genocide:
“As we all know, these media often deliberately discredit and attack China for political reasons. Recently, The human rights issue in Xinjiang deliberately created by the Western government and the media is the most typical example.”
The group’s website lists the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in New York and a Chinese telecommunications company as its sponsors.
Samuel Kim, Managing Editor of the Cornell Review and Co-President of Cornell’s Society for the Promotion of East Asian Liberty, provided the following analysis:
“Promoting academic freedom ought to be one of the core goals of any university. This objective should be pursued in every venture of an academic institution, both at home and abroad. Legitimate concerns about academic freedom and human rights have been raised in Cornell University’s joint-ventures with other Chinese universities, most notably the ILR School’s venture with Renmin University. I believe that the Student Assembly and Faculty Senate made the right decision in raising these concerns and urging the university to reject the proposed dual-degree program in its current form.”
Roland Molina ‘22, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps and is the Military Affairs Analyst at the Cornell Review, provided the following comment:
“The effort by the Beijing backed CSSA serves as an example of what any university would be associating with should they choose to embrace a partnership with CCP controlled universities: an authoritarian regime that uses manipulation, leverage and lies to achieve the goals of the party at the expense of human dignity.”
A recent Cornell alumnus, who requested to stay anonymous, stated:
“If Cornell decides to work with PKU, Cornell/PKU students in the dual degree program should explicitly be exposed to the liberal democratic ideas that America is founded on and be provided with proper internet access during their time at PKU.”
In China, the “Great Firewall” has been defined as the “largest and most sophisticated online censorship operation in the world”.
Dakota Johnson, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, staff writer for the Cornell Review, and member of the College Republicans, provided the following statement:
“I don’t think Cornell should have anything to do with China until they get their act together with their human rights issues. It would be a bad look for Cornell to be associated with a country with these problems.”
