Is it legitimate to compromise on academic freedom abroad? The case of NYU in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi

Is it legitimate for an academic institution or individual to compromise academic freedom in order to gain access to a population otherwise controlled by an authoritarian regime? The question is posed not only by my own personal situation of teaching at NYU-Shanghai during this Spring Term but also by NYU’s public relations fiasco with Professor Andrew Ross, a sociologist who was barred by the United Arab Emirates from entering UAE to do research while on Spring Break at NYU-Abu Dhabi. NYU’s critics predictably used the UAE’s exclusion of Ross as a reason to castigate NYU for maintaining a campus in the territory of a regime that severely limits freedom of expression. (For Ross' views, see the Baffler. For an interview with Ross, see NY Magazine).

In my own view, however, the question of whether or not to compromise on academic freedom for the sake of a physical presence in authoritarian turf does not have any categorically correct answer. It all depends on what one must give up and what one gains. Insisting on academic purity unsullied by any compromise with repressive governments is like Pontius Pilates’ hand-washing: It may give its adherents a pleasantly self-righteous feeling, but the withdrawal from engagement with the real world may leave the world less free in the name of freedom. Indeed, if taken seriously, such zealous purism would bar NYU from doing business in any regime that protects freedom of expression less rigorously than the USA -- excluding NYU from launching a campus in (for instance) the UK or Canada.

In particular, it seems to me that NYU would be right to accept an “inside-outside” deal from the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai. Under such a deal, NYU’s faculty and students would be free to teach and learn whatever they please inside the classroom but they cannot lobby, kibitz, incite, persuade, organize, or otherwise participate in local politics outside on the street or in cyberspace. (Not being privy to the internal negotiations between the university and the Chinese authorities, I am not saying that NYU expressly struck any such a deal but only that this seems to me, based on my own experience, to be the actual ground rules practically governing students and faculty at NYU-Shanghai).

Why accept such a pact with the devil? Because such an agreement can enlarge the total amount of freedom above that which faculty and students would otherwise enjoy in the absence of compromise.

If NYU is able to offer Chinese nationals a freer education than that which they would otherwise have at a Chinese university, then NYU’s rigid refusal to compromise leaves those students less free. If NYU were to insist that its constituents must be able to pursue in Shanghai every expressive activity that they are entitled to pursue at Washington Square, then the Chinese government would simply refuse to allow us to teach in the PRC at all. Such an uncompromising posture would leave students worse off, depriving them of the benefits of an education that Chinese eagerly seek. Any theory of academic freedom that actually diminishes real freedom strikes me as a dogmatic pose, not a sensible policy.

How much of a compromise of academic ideals should a university or professor make to gain access to the territory controlled by an authoritarian regime? There is no easy answer to this question: It all depends on the details of the deal. Denunciations of NYU that suggest such an easy moral answer strike me as morally obtuse.

Individual professors agonize over these tough choices all the time, regardless of whether their home institution opens a campus abroad. Take, for example, academics’ decision about whether to testify about China before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. As Donald Clarke, an old China hand, has noted, some academics most knowledgeable about China decided not to testify in order not to offend the Chinese government and thereby lose their access to a visa to enter China. Are these silent professors guilty of some Faustian bargain? If their work is improved by their being physically present in China, then I say: Good for such Fausts. It is a tough balancing act to decide whether the price of a visa is too high, but the notion that one always strikes the right balance by straight talk that forfeits the visa at least needs some defense. What if such professors actually learn more and thereby provide more information to the world by maintaining contacts with the CCP at the price of keeping silent before the USCESRC? Why is it necessarily the right answer to uncompromising refuse to trim one’s sails, exclude oneself from China, and thereby deprive the world of the information that one could obtain by being more discrete?

Half of my students in my course at NYU-Shanghai on Constitutional Law are PRC citizens. The discussion in my class is uncompromisingly free. We hold weekly debates on politically sensitive topics like judicial review of legislation by independent courts or “shanggui” (the judicially unreviewed executive detention of party officials accused of corruption or other crimes). We all know that we cannot hold rallies on these topics outside on Century Avenue in Pudong, Shanghai. I would be deported, and they would be arrested. It strikes me as bizarre to suggest, however, that my students would be freer if I “self-deported” myself before even teaching the course by telling the Chinese authorities that I would insist on the same freedom of expression that I enjoy back in New York. Whose freedom, exactly, would be enhanced by such rigidity? My students would lose the classroom discussion but not gain the right to rally outside the classroom. Everyone would left less free, all in the name of freedom.

What is true of individuals also applies to institutions. There is no simple, bright-line formula defining whether to accept limits on what an institution’s students and faculties can preach on the streets as the price for freedom in the classroom. It all depends on what the institution gains by a physical presence in the territory of a repressive regime. I cannot speak for NYU-Abu Dhabi, but, after two months’ teaching in Shanghai, I can say that NYU-Shanghai has hosted a completely free-wheeling discussion among a multi-national student body and faculty about everything from Xi’s corruption purges to the Cultural Revolution. Should NYU sacrifice this boon to freedom because the students cannot hold a public rally outside the doors of 1555 Century Avenue? Why? NYU’s leaving would not enlarge the students’ power to rally: It would just prevent those who do not want to leave China of the ability to gain an American-style university education.

Taken to its logical extreme, rejection of all such compromise on freedom of expression would bar American academic institutions from ever sponsoring classrooms or research outside of the United States. No nation in the world constitutionally guarantees the level of free expression enjoyed in the USA. Canada’s laws censor hate speech, for instance, while the UK’s tort law classifies as defamatory statements that, if published in the USA, are immune from liability. Must NYU piously foreswear sponsoring any campus in Toronto because the students there cannot yell with impunity anti-gay epithets that are protected speech in NYC?

Such a posture is absurdly dogmatic to my mind. It assumes that freedom can only exist under American rules. Lots of regimes, however, protect lesser degrees of freedom. The restrictions such regimes impose do not vitiate the freedom that remains. From personal experience talking with Chinese academics and students not only at NYU-Shanghai but also at Tsinghua, Beida, and Fudan, I would say that “private” speech in China (that is, speech in the academic workshop, classroom, or café) is basically unfettered, even as speech on the street and in cyberspace is vigorously pruned and sometimes punished. What exactly is gained, as aside from a smug feeling of moral self-righteousness, by striking the pose of virtuous libertarians and piously refusing to join in the private conversation in China because one cannot hold a public rally?

The question of acceptable compromise strikes me as one of degree. It depends on costs and benefits, not rhetoric and postures. If China insisted – as it does not – that NYU endorse the Chinese regime, then the game might not be worth the candle: The marginal benefits for our Chinese students would be outweighed by the misinformation that NYU would spread through its coerced endorsement. Likewise, I would not teach constitutional law in Shanghai if the government could edit my syllabus to suit its ideological priorities: The students would gain little for yet another bland course that they could just as easily take elsewhere, and I would resent the interference more than the experience would be worth. China, however, leaves me free to teach what I please: Why, then, is it somehow an unacceptable price for a visa that I cannot also march up and down the streets yelling anti-government slogans?