The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/china/)
Criticism of the Chinese government is not an insult to the Chinese student community at Cornell University, nor can acting as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party fully represent all Chinese students. These truths should be self-evident. At Cornell, the critique and resistance against the political violence of the Beijing regime never stopped.
In his farewell address, George Washington famously said that Americans should set aside their “violent lines and dislikes of foreign nations,” adding that it would let our passions control us and make us slaves. Washington was totally correct, but we’re too deep in the woods to get back home.
In a recent study published in “Science of the Total Environment,” scientists at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology and Zhejiang University found that the surface urban heat island effect had implications on bird diversity in China, causing them to migrate from urban to suburban areas in the 336 Chinese cities studied.
The Faculty Senate voted to condemn the repressive actions of the People’s Republic of China.
Xian Wang, a professor of East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Notre Dame, to explore the exploitation of Chinese women during World War II as part of the series hosted by the Cornell Contemporary China Initiative, themed “Engendering China.”
In light of the ongoing discussions about the lack of awareness, sensitivity and the objectionable response from members of the Brooks School of Public policy in conversations regarding human rights violations against Uyghur people in China, we should assess Cornell’s policies and initiatives surrounding the ongoing genocide. Cornell has extensive collaborations in China, ranging from scholarships such as the Tang Cornell-China program to the Cornell-Tsinghua Dual Degree Finance MBA program, Cornell Institute for China Economic Research and the Cornell China Center. In fact, Cornell has the greatest number of collaborations — amounting to over 10 percent of all international collaborations — in China, including off-campus programs at Peking University. In these numerous efforts affiliated with China, what is Cornell doing to support the Uyghur people and voice opposition to the massive genocide by the Chinese government? Human rights violations against Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Muslim minority groups perpetrated by the Chinese government range from denial of the expression of civil and political rights, freedom of religion, to the right to a fair trial.
Tursunay Ziyawudun, a Uighur Muslim who survived China’s Xinjiang concentration camp, spoke to Cornellians on Monday about international solidarity and her experience of human rights violations at the hands of the Chinese government.
Protesters and counterprotesters assembled on the Arts Quad on Friday at a Hong Kong Action Day Rally.
Well, mainly the Pandemic. Although, unlike the situation in Jan. 2020, being in China right now means being in a place with one of the lowest number of cases on Earth. I even wrote a column then, hoping that this would not turn into a global pandemic. Trust me; as some of the few Chinese students who chose to spend this last year in the U.S. rather than return home, the differences couldn’t be less drastic. While I’m trying to gauge how bad a semester (turned out to be two) of zoom university was going to be back in Sept. 2020, my friends back home in China were already going to nightclubs with no fear.
Aiming to spread awareness on the genocide of the Uighur people, Cornell students formed the student organization Boycott the People’s Republic and hosted a Friday rally outside Goldwin Smith Hall.