Well, buried in the middle of this article is an important point:
> In fact, as of the fall 2019 semester, Gerber had been officially enrolled only at the university in China, not at St. Gallen.
So he was a Swiss person doing a PhD at a Chinese university. His relationship with the professor at the Swiss university was an unofficial one, so the word 'dismissal' here is pretty misleading. No information about what happened to his actual PhD program at the Chinese university that I noticed.
The actual evidence of chinese influence?
> She said she had received a message from a Chinese doctoral student doing research at a Canadian university.
So, it sure sounds like some people had their feelings hurt.
My totally made-up hypothesis on this article: honest reporter researched a story, realised it was pretty weak, then when they wrote it up shuffled things around a bit to give an exaggerated impact, but couldn't bring themselves to lie or leave out any facts.
There's information on his Swiss PhD program in the article. The Swiss University advised him to de-register so he could maintain years of eligibility or whatever, and the Swiss advisor continued to supervise him obviously. The University had told him that re-registering upon his return would be "no problem" with the support of the advisor. So he kind of got caught in a transitional stage where he has no options if a dispute with the advisor arises. Maybe it's not fair to criticize the University administration for this, but it's not accurate to simply describe him as unaffiliated and making up fake news or something.
As for the Canadian student, the quotes from the professor herself are what say the complaints came "from China". Perhaps she meant from the Chinese student in Canada, but if so that's her error, not the author's.
It does not pass the smell test. This is not an error one would make. Imagine one gets an email from Z, X-Y <xyz...@ucanuckistan.ac.ca>, then why would one describe this as "emails (ed: plural!) from China"?
My theory that fits the evidence given is that the professor is withholding the real "angry emails from China" because she thinks if those are published, then she definitely won't get a travel visum anymore and thus negatively impact her career.
It's possible. It's also possible that this was the only email, but she got a warning from some Chinese government agency through another channel.
There is of course also the distinct possibility that the professor was personally offended by the tweet (or imagined the offense taken) and made up the "emails from china" to make it seems more impactful.
I agree. This take is supported by the fact that the Prof refuses to reveal the email address of the Canadian student. My guess is similar to yours. She received emails e. g. from a Chinese consulate but is not allowed to reveal that fact - so she made up this "Canadian student" story.
Well, you would be surprised. It seems attempting to censor Twitter and other publications is part of their job. They even review German children books:
And that's the whole point of this piece of misinformation. "Came from China" doesn't mean that the country of China was involved, but that people in China involved didn't want this or that. It could similarly be a problem with news that "came from Switzerland", or that "came from USA", but of course the media wants to play the game of China (the country) as a bad actor.
It's not the people of China, who should be free to criticize their government and talk about any topic. It's the CCP that stops them and others worldwide.
More along the lines, 'Even in Switzerland the political pressure of China affects the freedom of speech'.
The part that you leave out is that the university actually recommended to the student that he should terminate/suspend his enrollment in the first place. To me it looks like the university is using the fact that he wasn't enrolled anymore as some kind of damage control to distance itself from the events.
You are right, the actual facts are not very strong (in terms of legal action), but I think it is a good 'I have nothing to hide...' example.
The swiss university had advised the student to be enrolled only China in order to make it easier for him to complete his PhD at the swiss university afterwards. The swiss university is now evading their moral responsibility by hiding behind the convenient legal situation.
The professor explicitly cut ties with the student because she was afraid to lose her ability to get a visa for China. It's unclear how she came to this conclusion, but I don't see how she can conclude this just from a message she got from a student in Canada. Chinese authorities must have made it clear at some point that they are ready to punish either this or any slightest misstep like this. And it's really an insignificant incident: someone who is not officially her student, has basically no followers because he just created his account, tweets a little and deletes everything as soon as the professor finds a problem with it.
I'm not familiar with universities outside the ETH rules (ETHZ/EPFL only) but students are paid a salary at these universities and hold dual status as employees and students. I'm not sure if their tuition is waived. Even if they pay the same tuition as masters or bachelors students this is usually around 800-900 CHF per semester, the cost of 2-3 months health insurance. Not money you want to pay if you don't have to, but it isn't UK or US fees.
However there are definitely time limits. You would find it hard to be enrolled on a doctoral programme for 6 years or more especially if you aren't about to imminently graduate, and this is likely the main motivation behind the advice given the proposed 3 year break in China.
Only PhDs are paid. I think the salary scale starts at around 51,000 CHF. That's a lot for other countries but it isn't for Switzerland. The exact amount is public knowledge and you can find it if you look. It is slightly higher for ETHZ, but not much.
Also the following account of his experience in China, which certainly served as a greater pretext than the tweets of an account with 10 followers:
> A Chinese professor there told him that his Ph.D. topic was «boring» – a euphemism for being too critical of the government. As a part of his fellowship, he also had to attend classes, and says today he couldn’t believe how much censorship took place in the course of everyday university life. When he submitted an essay on reeducation camps, he received the lowest grade possible. In an email to his professor in St. Gallen, he wrote: «Maybe I've just been unlucky.»
I am deeply bothered by this totalitarian allergic reaction to criticism at even the lowest level. However as someone who is intimately familiar with life in the soviet union, this is not simply a case of bad luck if one takes actions that significantly increase one's radar signature to the censorship arm. If you are perceived as being "troublesome" by those who stand to lose much through being affiliated with someone openly critical of the regime, they may well take action to smooth out this political perturbance in their lives. They may do so whether they are staunch believers in the status quo or simply wishing to remain neutral at worst.
Now I am not saying he should not have done what he did, but he should have been more aware of the possible outcomes to avoid being so blindsided.
It would have been far more effective to relay his thoughts through more sympathetic channels. If the first person one's government criticism goes through is not a fan, that is a shaky start for one's efforts. A support network is needed. One can't shout into the void alone.
I wouldn't want to be his sponsor either. It just shows either a complete misunderstanding of the power dynamics of an outsider doing research in China, or poor judgement.
> I wouldn't want to be his sponsor either. It just shows either a complete misunderstanding of the power dynamics of an outsider doing research in China, or poor judgement.
If your priorities are power dynamics, that would make sense. But there are other priorities, such as freedom of speech and open inquiry, which are more important, on which research and knowledge and freedom itself are based.
Speaking as someone who has been through the academic dance party, I wouldn't want to attend an academic institution in Switzerland. I've heard of many breakups between students and their advisors, although this seems particularly ill advised, but I've never heard of the institution kicking the student out immediately. Or of the other faculty not finding a place for him.
Their dedication to academic integrity is suspect.
They didn't have to kick him out. He was withdrawn from school, had a falling out with the PhD advisor he needed to get back in, then sued the school. After he sued the school and lost, professors really didn't want to be his advisor.
But unofficial relationships matter in science. For example, I am currently doing an unpaid internship in the hopes of getting a paper out of it. If the professor cancelled it, I might be left with nothing to show for months of hard work, similar to the guy in the story. That kind of thing is not uncommon at all at the PhD level.
> So he was a Swiss person doing a PhD at a Chinese university
He'd been advised by Gallen to deregister with a plan for how and when to re-enroll. It's pretty obvious in retrospect that they did this so they could have a trapdoor under him just in case something went bad in China.
Almost. Since the "Neue Züricher Zeitung" changed to their current editor-in-chief in - I wanna say 2015 - they have moved to towards a more politically right-wing, conservative position.
From how this position is expressed in germany-austria-switzerland, "china=bad, universities too liberal, someone think of my country!" is not an uncommon sentiment.
and certainly there's no reason why so many students from .cn, even .tw, do use, for instance, WeChat merely for 'clean', 'non-political', absolutely superficial messaging only but other Apps/Protocools speaking frankly -- ofc only to those whom they know and decided to trust
get out there : speak to students, any level, from any spot in .cn, be that .HK, or any mainland-.cn spot
if u succeed in establishing a bi-laterally trustet basis for discussion, well, then u achieved a lot in the first place
it was pretty different some 7-10yrs back, give or take; depended much more on where ppl originated from, where relatives/friends in .cn were stationed
it turned significantly worse -- from my pov, judged on the basis of experience of my real-life contacts -- i can pin-point the date : the day after that day when in .HK the Victoria Park got crowded peacefully for the first time and clips of it made top headlines, the other yr
there is no argument of whatever twisted nature which could whitewash what's been going on for some time : in the arts, for instance, we do not have a single contact in .cn who not yet experienced what suppression of the .cn-govt kind can amount to. in specific fields of neuroscience, i can speak of myself, it worsened dramatically, in particular, when all the paper-mills, fakes & fraud in sciences and faked-publications widely made news progressively
right now, as we speak, there are 3 ppl from .cn in that part only of the univ college bldg i'm currently in, who told me, that they perfectly well know what's expected from them not make their friends and relatives in .cn pay for their 'a-social' behaviour. on a regular basis they post some crappy pics to fb/ig but no personal comment other that 'happy b-day', or so.
their wording, in private, on this whole issue of soc-nets and what to do, more importantly, what not to do, is way more blunt and precise : suffering is the term most frequently employed
a very well-known artist, who sadly died the other month, spoke about his experiences in .cn when visting a friends art-circle in .cn for quite a few months. he was not the man to be easily scared. he'd worked a lot on what nazi-phekkers did, their ideology, their crimes. he had been attacked by french presidential candiates, amongst one not shy to send him her creeps to his doorstep interfering disturbingly with his installations & exhibitions [till they realised it boosted reception of his art but not their malicious intent]. as he did put it, to him too, there was no big difference in what it must have been like in the 3rd reich and what he experienced over there.
systems are much alike. badges, and brand names, may differ tho
techniques might have improved, aims and malicious intent not
Thank you! I am glad to see people are actually reading the articles. Last time this was published no one even bothered to note that there was no intervention from China whatsoever. Following the same logic a hotel worker losing their job because an American tourist complained can say that the United States got them fired..
The comments critical of the CCP in this thread prove that confirmation bias is alive and well. There are many things to critique about China obviously but this particular instance is not one of them.
Yes, there is no concrete intervention that the CCP did. Still, a supervisor broke off their contact with a promising student based on either the fear of retribution or personal feelings of nationalism. That culture is the product of CCP censorship and many people don't want it in the western world.
Honestly, if I were a professor and my PhD student was overly critical of the US online, I too would distance myself. Visa applications are hard enough as they are.
Eh - I knew Arab students who couldn't get their visa renewed for some years after Sep 11. They were involved in antiwar protests, etc. The fact that the US put many of its own anti-war activists on no-fly lists despite not having any evidence they were threats makes this pretty easy to believe.
Happy ending here: he was admitted to the country a week later, on his second attempt, in time to start classes.
(I'm not making excuses for the---dire---state of our immigration policy as a whole. But I was happy to see that this particular case worked out in the end.)
The article mentions a single tweet with a comic depiction that includes possibly exaggerated Asiatic features. Whether this kind of thing qualifies as “racist”… opinions may differ, especially since the article does not provide the original image.
Some comments might be off the mark, but the article itself is completly honest about the fact that they cannot prove that any chinese officials were even involved in this mess.
The underlying criticism is more that the professor (and if you want to extrapolate swiss institutions as a whole) engaged in some "working towards the fuhrer" behaviour. She took very drastic steps (ruining this students career) on the basis of what would be in the interest of the CCP.
And I would argue that this behaviour is very much incentivized by the CCP. Take a look at how censorhip within the country works: The laws are often quite vague, but enforcement is draconian. This leads people and institutions to guess what the government would want and act (self-censor) accordingly.
> In fact, as of the fall 2019 semester, Gerber had been officially enrolled only at the university in China, not at St. Gallen.
So he was a Swiss person doing a PhD at a Chinese university. His relationship with the professor at the Swiss university was an unofficial one, so the word 'dismissal' here is pretty misleading. No information about what happened to his actual PhD program at the Chinese university that I noticed.
The actual evidence of chinese influence?
> She said she had received a message from a Chinese doctoral student doing research at a Canadian university.
So, it sure sounds like some people had their feelings hurt.
My totally made-up hypothesis on this article: honest reporter researched a story, realised it was pretty weak, then when they wrote it up shuffled things around a bit to give an exaggerated impact, but couldn't bring themselves to lie or leave out any facts.