Disturbing report from the Daily Princetonian…
In an announcement to students enrolled in POL 362: Chinese Politics, Rory Truex ’07, an assistant professor of politics, said he would “recommend that students who are currently residing in China should not take the course this year.”
“As you might expect, the course contains material that the Chinese government would find sensitive,” he told students on Friday, in a message obtained by The Daily Princetonian. “This, coupled with the fact that we are remote, and that China’s new National Security Law has some sweeping provisions, means that we need to be a little more cautious this year.”
The national security law referenced in Truex’s email was enacted last June and gives Beijing “broad power” to punish political crimes, according to The New York Times. The law specifically outlaws perpetrators of subversion, separatism, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces, but because these crimes are “vaguely defined,” some believe the law could be widely applied to curtail speech and writing critical of the government.
“This isn’t a ban on Chinese students taking the course,” Truex clarified in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “This is a recommendation [based on] my assessment of the situation.”
Truex explained that since the course “includes material that is banned in China,” he didn’t “want anyone to feel that they were in a position where they had to access banned material in order to succeed in my course.”
“We’re going to be talking about Tiananmen Square, the cultural revolution … about Xi Jinping and repression, and so forth,” he explained. “A lot of the material is from Western sources and websites that are formally banned in China.”
He also stressed that the recommendation came from him alone — not the University or the politics department — and falls under “faculty independence and purview.”
Still, Alan Patten, the chair of the politics department, told the ‘Prince’ “the Department supports Truex’s recommendation to his students on this matter.”
