Tag: Free speech

Timing is everything. As I explain in my book Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech, the overlap in 2020 of the Zoomification of society due to COVID-19 restrictions with the passage of Hong Kong’s national security law created a speech and privacy nightmare for higher education.

On June 30, 2020, Beijing enforced the national security law in Hong Kong, targeting alleged acts of separatism, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign countries. It was a vaguely-worded legislative weapon handed to authorities to crush the city’s vibrant democracy and protest movements. But it did even more than that. The law was also explicitly written to apply to acts committed “outside the region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the region.”

That means anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time, can violate this law.

For the hundreds of thousands of students moving to and from mainland China or Hong Kong and foreign campuses, to the academics who study the region, and for those with family in the city, it created a cloud of fear. They already had to contend with the possibility of violating the law with even anodyne political statements and facing arrest when stepping foot in the region. But with everything in higher education taking place online during the pandemic’s early days, from classroom discussions to political debates among friends, the risk that offending statements could be surveilled and catalogued rose skyrocketed.

And as I document in my book, even American campuses were not immune to the law’s shadow.

In today’s excerpt from the book, though, I’d like to detail the effects of the laws within Hong Kong’s education system itself, as a primer on how swiftly such laws can wholesale silence dissent.

Excerpt

Perhaps most emblematic of the swift changes in Hong Kong after the national security law’s passage was the systematic removal of all physical remembrances of the Tiananmen massacre. Off campus, memorials and candlelight vigils were banned, in part under the guise of pandemic-safety gathering limitations, and individuals were arrested on the anniversary of the massacre for small signs of commemoration like carrying flowers or handing out blank pieces of paper.

On campus, administrators quickly set their sights on revered symbols memorializing the killings. The purge began at HKU with Danish artist Jens Galschiøt’s “Pillar of Shame,” an arresting sculpture of tormented and tortured figures representing those who died that day along with the inscription: “The old cannot kill the young forever.” The twenty-six- foot sculpture had stood there for nearly twenty-five years.

In prior years, students would organize an annual cleaning of the statue as an act of remembrance for the dead. That is, until October 2021, when HKU ordered the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the already disbanded group that organizes Hong Kong’s Tiananmen vigils, to remove the statue within a week. HKU alleged that the sculpture’s presence posed a “legal risk” to the university and was initially represented in the matter by Chicago-based law firm Mayer Brown, which withdrew from representing the university on this specific legal issue after criticism. Interestingly, this was not Mayer Brown’s first foray into art removal efforts. In 2014, the firm represented plaintiffs who unsuccessfully sued to force Glendale, California to take down public art commemorating the “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army in World War II.

Facing “direct pressure from Beijing’s local offices,” under the watch of security guards, and out of sight behind plastic curtains, large barriers, and boarded-up windows, HKU ultimately dismantled and removed the statue in the dead of night just a few days before Christmas. It was loaded into a cargo container and taken away by crane. Weeks later, while students were away on break, HKU would cover up another memorial, this time a slogan painted on a campus bridge: “Souls of martyrs shall forever linger despite the brutal massacre; Spark of democracy shall forever glow for the demise of evils.”

Galschiøt said the statue’s removal was “a disgrace and an abuse” that “shows that Hong Kong has become a brutal place without laws and regulations.” It was “grotesque that they use the Western holiday, Christmas, to carry out the destruction of the artwork.” Galschiøt asserted that he owned the statue and should be consulted on its removal, but was ignored by HKU.

If you were hoping for an outcry—or at least a response—from the dozens of American universities that partnered with HKU for study abroad and other programs, you would be disappointed. If these universities have any qualms about sending their students to a region where basic forms of expression and protest are increasingly penalized, they have not been vocal about it. Nor did they speak out when HKU announced a proposal to punish students who “bring disrepute,” not defined, to the institution—a laughably vague provision that will surely be used to target students whose political persuasions or administrative criticisms prove a little too uncomfortable for skittish university leaders to tolerate.

As with the student union closures, the removal of the HKU Tiananmen memorial set off a domino effect, with two more occurring that week, also before dawn. Chinese University of Hong Kong took down its “Goddess of Democracy” statue, which stood at the campus for over a decade and mirrored one erected by students at Tiananmen Square, and Lingnan University removed artwork that included depictions of the Goddess of Democracy and “Tank Man,” the Chinese protester who famously stood in front of a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Lingnan cited “legal and safety risks” and CUHK claimed an “internal assessment” led to the takedown of the “unauthorised statue.” A small group of students responded by handing out “missing” flyers asking: “Have you seen her?” The Goddess of Democracy statue at City University of Hong Kong would be next on the chopping block. The office of then‒Chief Executive of HongKong Carrie Lam did not offer any comment in response to questions about whether authorities had any involvement in the campus purge.

“The turning point for me and my family was when they took down the Goddess of Democracy statue on Christmas Eve in the middle of the night. That’s when I no longer felt safe,” Marie told me when I was able to get back in touch with her months after she had left CUHK. Before the law passed, she and her colleagues “openly talked about anything and everything,” but “suddenly, it all stopped” in 2020. “That was the scary part—just things changing overnight—nobody really thought it would be that bad.”

Forced forgetting, it seems, is to be the future for Hong Kong. This systematic elimination of the symbols and markers of a legacy of protest is an especially cruel punishment for a city whose identity is so firmly intertwined with it. And as the Tiananmen memorials have vanished from campus, something else has taken its place—mandatory education about the very law that has changed the legal and social landscape of Hong Kong.

In fall 2021, the first wave of mandatory national security education began. At Hong Kong Baptist University, in the presence of photographers and CCTV monitoring, students attended a two-hour lecture and 200-page PowerPoint presentation about the national security law’s provisions and punishments, followed by a required multiple-choice test. The test included characters like “Ms. Naughty” and “Mr. Breach,” illustrating violators of the law.

At one point, the presentation asked, “Is criticizing the government a crime under the national security law?,” and answered, “It depends. If the criticism involves any of the four major crimes under the national security law,” then “it may be counted as a crime.”

Excerpted from Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech by Sarah McLaughlin. Copyright 2025. Published with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.

I’ll be back tomorrow with an excerpt detailing how threats to China’s critics abroad have infiltrated not just the U.S. but other campuses in other democracies around the world.

There are many ways that universities interact with the wider world, whether by coordinating study abroad programs or welcoming students from dozens of countries onto their campuses. But one of the most complex ties universities form is in their satellite campuses, in which they put down roots in other nations, usually in close coordination with local government officials.

These campuses have created the potential for a monumental clash between American-style academic freedom commitments and restrictive foreign legal systems. In some cases, that potential has borne out. When put to the test by local authorities, universities’ promises to import their speech commitments overseas have been found wanting.

In a just-released Aug. 5 interview with Northwestern’s outgoing president Michael Schill, the House Committee on Education and Workforce asked Schill about Northwestern’s campus in Qatar. His answers cut directly to the heart of the disconnect between how universities both commit to abiding by local law and also offering the same speech protections as their home campuses.

Q Does Northwestern Qatar operate in accordance with all Qatari laws?

A I believe it has to.

Q This includes Qatari censorship laws, correct?

A I don’t—so I—I don’t know the answer to that as a legal matter. I believe that we have Qatar, the university—NU-Q has the same academic freedom and free speech that our domestic campus has in the United States, that we have in Evanston.

Schill also said he had “no idea” whether Qatari officials would allow Northwestern community members to criticize the government.

In today’s guest post for my book Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech, I share an excerpt detailing how we already know Northwestern’s values clash with local law—and who wins out:

Excerpt:

In Education City, an academic initiative spearheaded and infused with billions of dollars by the state-linked Qatar Foundation, a group of universities started setting up shop around the early 2000s. In the years since American institutions expanded into Qatar, critics have challenged the wisdom of deepening educational ties in a country with immense wealth, but deeply impoverished political and civil rights. Do the financial benefits of expansion into the Gulf states outweigh the associated limits on free expression?

These concerns have been justified numerous times. A 2020 incident, where a campus event clashed with legal and social attitudes about homosexuality in the country, offers useful insight into these tensions. That February, NU-Q was set to host an event on media revolutions in the Middle East, with Lebanese indie rock band Mashrou’ Leila, whose lead singer is gay, taking part. In Qatar, sexual activity among same-sex individuals was then, and still is, punishable with prison time. News of the event had provoked cancellation demands on social media, with complaints that NU-Q was denigrating local law and culture.

The demands were met. Northwestern’s director of media relations asserted that both the campus and the band mutually agreed to cancel the event “out of abundance of caution due to several factors, including safety concerns for the band and our community.” Instead, the event was scheduled to take place at Northwestern’s home base in Illinois. It was troubling that, as Northwestern alleged, safety concerns necessitated the event’s cancellation, but at least the university sought an alternate venue for the event to continue. A change of venue is better than a total cancellation. End of story, right?

Not according to the Qatar Foundation, a campus partner and Education City leader, which released a statement completely undercutting Northwestern’s claims about its decision-making. “We place the utmost importance on the safety of our community and currently do not have any safety or security concerns,” a spokesperson told media. “We also place the very highest value on academic freedom and the open exchange of knowledge, ideas and points of view in the context of Qatari laws as well as the country’s cultural and social customs. This particular event was canceled due to the fact that it patently did not correlate with this context.”

So, rather than undefined security threats, the Qatar Foundation made clear why Mashrou’ Leila was unwelcome at NU-Q: Qatar’s laws and social customs. In 2022, Northwestern’s claims were challenged yet again—this time by Craig LaMay, who was dean of the Qatar campus at the time of the Mashrou’ Leila cancellation. LaMay asserted that the Qatar Foundation directly ordered him to shut down the event because of the lead singer’s sexuality.

It is now difficult to avoid the conclusion that Northwestern not only canceled an event because of a participant’s identity, but then openly lied about why the event was canceled, and that its state-affiliated partner in Qatar ordered the cancellation.

At the time, I wrote that this incident flew in the face of NU-Q’s promise to protect the “freedom to communicate, assemble and peaceably demonstrate” and the “freedom to join organizations, to speak freely, and to exercise one’s civil rights as long as the student does not claim to represent the institution.” It was quite clear that there were unwritten limits to that freedom.

Those limits did not escape the notice of Northwestern’s faculty. In 2021, the faculty senate passed a resolution to its handbook’s academic freedom policy, one that had been in the making even before the dustup the year prior. The new policy, applicable to all Northwestern campuses, abandoned the phrase “to the extent that applicable laws allow,” replacing it with: “While academic freedom essentially coexists with established legal frameworks, on rare occasion the two may be in conflict.”

While researching for this book in 2022, I found that in the two years since the incident, NU-Q’s previous student rights commitment, now only accessible via internet archive tools, had changed. New policies were posted and appeared, to my eyes, weaker. Now the policies stated that “students will be free from censorship in the publication and dissemination of their views as long as these are not represented as the views of Northwestern University and do not violate any University policies” and have “freedom of research, of legitimate classroom discussion, and of the advocacy of alternative opinions to those presented in the classroom.” The new promises on student rights emphasize the freedom for “legitimate” classroom discussion over the freedom to assemble and demonstrate. These may look like subtle changes, but they suggest where American and branch campuses diverge on important speech protections: What a student could write in an exam paper or suggest in a class discussion might not be as freely stated in the public quad. Negotiated protections on paper only go so far.

[Excerpted from Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech by Sarah McLaughlin. Copyright 2025. Published with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.]

Check back in tomorrow, when I will take a closer look at the sudden shift in Hong Kong’s higher education, the rapid censorship brought on by the passage of the national security law in the city, and what it meant for global freedom more broadly.

I’m delighted to report that Sarah McLaughlin (of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) will be guest-blogging this coming week about her new book. From the publisher’s summary:

A revealing exposé on how foreign authoritarian influence is undermining freedom and integrity within American higher education institutions.

In an era of globalized education, where ideals of freedom and inquiry should thrive, an alarming trend has emerged: foreign authoritarian regimes infiltrating American academia. In Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin exposes how higher education institutions, long considered bastions of free thought, are compromising their values for financial gain and global partnerships.

This groundbreaking investigation reveals the subtle yet sweeping influence of authoritarian governments. University leaders are allowing censorship to flourish on campus, putting pressure on faculty, and silencing international student voices, all in the name of appeasing foreign powers. McLaughlin exposes the troubling reality where university leaders prioritize expansion and profit over the principles of free expression. The book describes incidents in classrooms where professors hesitate to discuss controversial topics and in boardrooms where administrators weigh the costs of offending oppressive regimes. McLaughlin offers a sobering look at how the compromises made in American academia reflect broader societal patterns seen in industries like tech, sports, and entertainment….

And here are the jacket blurbs:

As universities globalize, authoritarian regimes export censorship to American campuses. In Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin unsparingly exposes how foreign pressure, self-censorship, and administrative complicity threaten academic freedom―challenging the notion that universities remain safe havens for open debate. A timely warning from the front lines of global free expression.
―Jacob Mchangama, Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and author of Free Speech: a History from Socrates to Social Media

Essential reading for understanding how authoritarians abroad are limiting the freedom to think, teach, and learn at US universities. McLaughlin expertly shows how the sensitivity discourse prevalent on campuses is invoked to serve the censorious impulses of foreign regimes. With authoritarianism ascendant at home, this book is even more relevant.
―Amna Khalid, Carleton College

Authoritarians in the Academy uncovers an alarming truth: oppressive governments are silencing their critics on campus, even those half a world away and in countries that protect campus free speech, including the United States. Beyond the students and faculty members who are directly targeted, the resulting chill stifles others and deprives all campus community members of the opportunity to hear suppressed information and ideas. This book is an urgent call to protect dissidents and dissent in higher education.
―Nadine Strossen, former president, American Civil Liberties Union; author of Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know

Authoritarians in the Academy is one of those books that turns over a lot of rocks, exposing the unpleasant things going on underneath… The book deserves a wide readership.
―National Review