10 thoughts on "Faculty Senate – March 17, 2021"

1. At the 24 Feb faculty senate meeting, Provost Kotlikoff said that “the proper role of the Faculty Senate is really to set general principles or to recommend general principles that are fundamental to the University for programs of this nature. It’s not to individually examine the details of each individual program.”

   However, general principles have already been set: they are the “Guidelines on Ethical International Engagement” issued on Nov 19, 2019 by Provosts Kotlikoff and Wolford. According to these guidelines, we are to “strive to ensure that international engagements are consistent with Cornell University values, including our commitment to…free and open inquiry and expression….” We are also to “avoid partnering with colleagues, organizations, agencies, or companies that are under credible and direct suspicion of malfeasance or serious legal or human rights violations.” Moreover, if “concerns arise…about violations of academic freedom or of other core Cornell values,” we are advised to consider such steps as “amendment of the terms of the program or termination of the program and relationship.”

   So, this is not a matter of the faculty senate trying to micromanage or overstep our bounds. General principles already exist. I’d like to know what information those vetting the proposed SHA-PKU collaboration consulted when they gave the program a green light.

   Currently, there are increasingly blatant constraints on academic freedom in China, even at Peking University. The head of Peking University was appointed by the Chinese Government in 2018, and that university, along with many others in China, have revised their charters and mission statements to remove any references to academic freedom and independent thought or research. These are no longer allowed.

   Chinese President Xi Jinping has defined seven “taboo” topics that cannot be discussed by professors, teachers, or any public servants. The topics are: 1) universal values of human rights and democratic, constitutional government; 2) press freedom; 3) civil society; 4) citizens’ rights; 5) the historical mistakes of the Chinese Communist Party; 6) the financial and political elite; and 7) judicial independence.

   This alone is cause for alarm. Additionally, though, faculty and students who challenge these “taboos” have been harassed and imprisoned.

   I would like Provosts Kotlikoff and Wolford to explain how the proposed collaboration with PKU was reviewed to uphold our existing Guidelines on Ethical International Engagement.

   • Reply by Risa Lieberwitz, ILR School, Faculty Senator:

     I agree with this comment. I’d like to emphasize the importance of providing transparency about the way that proposed joint program was reviewed. Provost Kotlikoff and Vice Provost Wolford should provide the Faculty Senate with specific information that was considered in vetting the proposed SHA-PKU joint program. It is the Faculty Senate’s responsibility in the shared governance process to deliberate and vote on the proposed joint program. To carry out this responsibility, the Faculty Senate needs full information about the vetting process, including written reports concerning the consideration of Cornell’s Guidelines on Ethical International Engagement.

   • Thank you for your thoughtful post. I find the university’s partnership with PKU very troubling. If we turn our heads today regarding the Uyghurs, Tibet, and Hong Kong, then tomorrow it will be Taiwan, etc.

2. Two things:
   1,
   It should be out of the question for Cornell to open new programs in China at this time. We have an extraordinary situation: The Chinese regime is in the midst of a massive genocide, a major crime under international law, and which is also the most atrocious ongoing act of racist violence on the planet. About this, there is no doubt — nor about how foreigners who continue business as usual are used to legitimate the regime, and its genocide. There is no doubt that it would be counter to Cornell’s stated fundamental values to do so by opening a new program at this time.
   It would also needlessly sully our university’s reputation (and that of the Hotel school, in the present case).
   For an outline of the facts about the genocide, see: https://newlinesinstitute.org/uyghurs/the-uyghur-genocide-an-examination-of-chinas-breaches-of-the-1948-genocide-convention/ ; more here: https://uhrp.org/featured-articles/chinas-re-education-concentration-camps-xinjiang
   Note also the need for solidarity with the many hundreds of ethnic academic colleagues and intellectuals who have been swept up along with the millions of ordinary people targeted only because of their ethnicity. Here is a tip-of-the-iceberg list that includes 77 university professors like ourselves, including a university president sentenced to death: https://uhrp.org/press-release/uhrp-update-435-intellectuals-detained-and-disappeared-uyghur-homeland.html
   Clearly what we should be debating is not new China programs, but a resolution for Cornell to condemn the racist atrocities, including those against our colleagues.

   2,
   Genocide denialism is an atrocious thing. Cornellians should be aware of the methods the Chinese regime deploys to manipulate people into parroting the party line, including to justify the ongoing genocide. When the regime presses Chinese people abroad into silence, or even to openly defend the regime and even to defend such horrors as its current genocide or its atrocious unilateral treaty breach in Hong Kong, they often do it with the threat of harm and injury, including to relatives back in China.
   Nevertheless, such genocide denialism must also be clearly and unequivocally condemned by our leaders. It cannot be tolerated or ignored — any more than Holocaust denialism or racist discourse about the US.

   • Thank you for this post. You’re exactly right, what should be debated is a resolution for Cornell to condemn the racist atrocities, including those against our colleagues.

3. Here is a link to a very good article, “Academic Freedom and China,” by Jennifer Ruth and Yu Xiao, published in ACADEME (Fall 2019):
   https://www.aaup.org/article/academic-freedom-and-china#.YFGNcecpDiV

4. I can only speak for myself but I believe the best way to proceed, given the Provost’s insistence that we develop general criteria for this program, would be:

   a) a pause in the consideration of the Hotel School/Peking University proposal that included the withdrawal of the “Sense of the Senate” resolution now pending before the Faculty Senate;

   b) the creation of a general process through which joint degree programs would be reviewed before coming before the Faculty Senate;

   c) and once that process is in place, renewed consideration of the Hotel School/Peking University proposal.

   All the best!

   Richard Bensel
   rfb2

5. The slides link to Cornell’s database of international collaborations, but I wonder if it captures the full extent of Cornell’s foreign engagements. (https://global.cornell.edu/operations/international-collaborations)

   For one, it doesn’t list any of Cornell’s engagement with Qatar, which is a bit silly since the Qatar Foundation is a major donor to Cornell and funds our Qatar medical campus. It also doesn’t list Cornell’s prior research ties to Huawei in China, although that omission might be because the program has elapsed.

6. What specific assurances does the University currently provide, and will be willing to extend, to all members of the Cornell community whose University related work and study brings them inside the PRC.

   What legal counsel can we be confident in being provided should we be detained, or charged with crimes inside China?

   What access to the University leadership can we expect?

   And, more substantively, is the University willing to put forward a policy that “If the Chinese government were to detain a Cornell faculty member, student, or staff, it will immediately review and possibly suspend all joint degree programs with that country. At the very least a moratorium of 30 days would be automatically triggered by any detention which would allow the University to gather information related to such an arrest, can develop a comprehensive response to it, and signal to our Chinese counterparts the seriousness with which Cornell would take such an incident and the resolve of its commitment to its students, staff and faculty working in China.”

   Can language to this effect be included in all MOAs and Project Agreements between Cornell and partner institutions in China moving forward.

7. I was just watching the inspiring video: “Cornell’s Land-Grant Mission and the Spirit of Public Engagement”
   At the start it says: “what happens in the world should matter and influence what goes on at this university”
   I think it’s time for us to ask a representative of the PRC/PKU to come to a Faculty Senate Meeting and discuss concerns that some of us have.
   If we can’t do that then I don’t think we are ready to collaborate.
   Carl Franck, Senator from Physics

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