As the Drew Pavlou affair has exposed, Australian universities are increasingly in thrall to the thuggish Chinese Communist Party.
The same academics who screech and thunder about “academic freedom” at the very notion of a dedicated course in Western Civilisation, happily fall to their knees the instant Beijing’s bully boys crack the whip. Increasingly, those bullies are the international students whose money the universities so desperately desire.
The University of NSW pulled an article in which one of its academics made comments critical of China’s human rights record in Hong Kong after a backlash from Chinese students.
“Now is the time to really step it up because the Chinese government has made it very clear that it will take action against Hong Kong citizens who try and stand up for their rights,” UNSW academic Elaine Pearson said in an interview posted on the law faculty website.
Just as the Chinese Communists keep an approving eye on the ABC, their gimlet scrutiny is ready to attack the merest criticism.
One day after the article appeared, Ms Pearson, the Australia director of Human Rights Watch, was the target of an article posted in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times, often seen as Beijing’s voice.
“Although the article was soon deleted, students who are still outraged have said the university’s behaviour brings ‘shame to Chinese students’ and demanded an apology,” the Global Times reported at the weekend.
“If the university maintains its tough stance, I will quit the school instead,” one student, who went by the pseudonym Lin Xia, told the Global Times.
UNSW, which had posted Ms Pearson’s piece to its Twitter platform on Friday, added an extraordinary disclaimer that “the opinions expressed by our academics do not always represent the views of UNSW”. “We have a long and valued relationship with Greater China going back 60 years,” the UNSW account tweeted.
That sucking sound you can hear clear across the Tasman is emanating from the UNSW’s Sydney campus.
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