After years of campaigning by local activists, James Glaser, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, and Diana Chigas, senior international officer and associate provost, announced the decision to close the Confucius Institute at Tufts University (CITU) on March 17, much to the delight of Tibetan student groups, but not without some measure of other students’ concern.
CITU is a non-profit educational collaboration between Tufts and Beijing Normal University (BNU). It was founded on June 24, 2015 by the executive institution of Confucius Institute (CI) Headquarters, also known as Hanban, i.e., the Office of Chinese Language Council International, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China.
The mission of CITU is to increase mutual understanding among people in China and in the United States through its effort to promote and support Chinese language and culture instruction and programming, and to facilitate and strengthen educational and cultural exchange and cooperation between academic institutions and the two countries. As of February 2020, 541 CIs have been established in 162 countries/regions around the world, with 81 in the United States.
However, recently, as geopolitical tensions have ratcheted up between the US and China, the number of CIs has begun to decline. The closing of CITU on the Tufts campus in Medford, Massachusetts has been demanded by members of the Tibetan, Uyghur, Hongkonger, Taiwanese, and Chinese communities since 2019.
Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch and MSNBC columnist, has explained her view of the dangers of CI on American college campuses.“Given the background of the Chinese government having a clear history of silencing views that the party doesn’t like and restricting academic freedom … I think Confucius institutes undermine academic freedom on the campus,” Wang said. “That’s, I think, why they should be closed.”
Tenzin Yangzom, Students for a Free Tibet Grassroots Coordinator, described the protests beginning in 2019, when “local activists just started emailing president Monaco to ask him to take down CITU. Ultimately, they weren’t successful, but they were able to put the pressure on Tufts. I think that’s why they readjusted their contract with Confucius Institute so that it’s shorter. Normally, the contract lasts up to five years, but Tufts shifted it for two years. And both parties can end their contract whenever they want.”
The protests were not successful in preventing Tufts from renewing their affiliation with CI in 2019. A committee of Tufts professors and administrators asked to review the institute found that CITU “has provided benefits to students and faculty at Tufts, especially in the Chinese Program, and has not exercised undue influence, suppression of academic freedom and improper bias.”
At the time, Dean Glaser said, “I’m confident that we have arrived at a very thoughtful and well-researched decision.We’re pleased that our students will continue to have access to a resource that helps them enhance their language skills and their understanding of Chinese culture. In addition to the enhanced oversight our new agreement establishes, we also will be establishing a committee of Tufts faculty to weigh in on the qualifications of proposed Chinese staff and the CITU’s activities in general to ensure that they align with our policies and priorities.”
This year, the protestors took a renewed approach, petitioning Tufts University President Anthony P. Monaco directly, but when that failed, going further to pursue their goals. According to Yangzom, “We started protesting in December of last year (2020). There were 12 protests and then the 13th one was Solidarity Saturday, where we got a lot of speakers, and prominent local activists and city councillors on board with us. We sent over 600 emails and as a result over 100 people came out on Saturday to support us, including Congresswoman Erika Uyterhoeven, school committee council member Sarah Philips,which led to support from members of the Medford City Council. And then four days later, Tuffs announced that they were not going to renew their contract with the CI.”
William Zhuang, a rising Tufts’25 freshmen, said, “As someone who was born and raised in China, I have encountered a lot of fake news which makes it hard for me to view the entire situation at an unbiased angle. Politics aside, speaking from the standpoint of someone who wants to learn more about the Chinese culture, CITU brought some benefits to the students, including classes taught by experts in the field. Students interested in learning more about China could have expanded their knowledge at CITU. The decision to close CITU is more complicated than giving us the best possible humanities education and has more to do with the political relationship between China and the US. But there is no point to politicize everything.”
Erik Eging, press liaison for the Confucius Institute U.S. Center wrote in an email to the Tufts Daily, “we are very sad to hear that [Tufts’] CI is closing. It’s unfortunate that an American university foreign language program is being forced to close due to political pressure and interference resulting from misinformation and twitter conspiracies instead of actual evidence. We are living at a time in our country where teaching a foreign language is now considered a political act, where our State Department feels comfortable casually accusing American citizens of espionage due to their enthusiasm for global language education, and our legislators feel empowered to utilize our countries current anti-Asian sentiment to deny students educational opportunities.”
Dean Glaser explained his change in perspective from 2019 to today and Tufts’ decision to close down CITU by explaining , “We have decided to focus more on our strong and growing direct relationship with BNU…We remain committed to international engagement with our partners and are enthused by increased student interest in Chinese language and culture. We look forward to the continued growth of our programming as we move ahead.”
The official closure of CITU will begin in September 2021, as the institute will continue to offer courses throughout spring and summer.
