20 ms·
Swiss Ph.D student’s dismissal spotlights China’s influence
- shard972 5y ago@dang, rule violation. Starting flame wars against china
- colechristensen 5y agoCompletely serious, any university that allows this to happen should lose accreditation and all public funding.
- hermitsings 5y agoImagine CCP becoming world leader.
- vagrantJin 5y agoWhat makes you think they are not? Is it different or worse from the US foreign policy of "lets kill brown people half way across the world"? The anti-China rhetoric has to stop somewhere.
- NotSammyHagar 5y agoThe US has a lot of problems and bad behavior. Yet we can talk about it without worrying if the us govt is pressuring our employer to fire us, without worrying about the safety of family members & friends living in the us will be rounded up. China is not that place. It's not anti-Chinese rhetoric to point our reality. China is the place where people wonder when the authorities are coming to take you to the re-education camp, hopefully not to be sterilized. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/magazine/uyghur-muslims-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/magazine/uyghur-muslims-c... https://www.theatlantic.com/the-uyghur-chronicles/ https://www.theatlantic.com/the-uyghur-chronicles/ https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/09/uighur-muslim-detention-camps-inpmrisonment-screaming-china/ https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/09/uighur-muslim-detention-c...
- vagrantJin 5y ago> The US has a lot of problems and bad behavior Hahaha. > China is the place where people wonder when the authorities are coming to take you to the re-education camp, hopefully not to be sterilized. You must be joking. Really. A link to NYT and theAtlantic? Stand up comedy might just be your thing.
- another_story 5y agoThis is not really the place for this sort of response.
- hermitsings 5y agoAgreed. At least, US is a free country.
- nickik 5y agoHopeful they at least dont want make endless war in the middle east.
- guerrilla 5y agoThat would be very unnatural. States make war for their interests. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_realism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_realism
- nickik 5y agoFighting in the Middle East is literally the exact opposite of what Neorealists believe. John Mearsheimer opposed to these idiotic middle east wars and has been for a long time.
- guerrilla 5y agoYou're confounding descriptive and persctiptive theory. Such conflicts are an obvious consequence of the setup despite deeper strategic analysis advising against it. In his book, Mearsheimer > readily acknowledges the inherent pessimism of offensive realism and its predictions because his world is one in which conflict between great powers will never see an end. [1] 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_Great_Power_Politics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_Great_Power_P...
- nickik 5y agoFighting in the Middle East is not great power conflict. Fighting in the Middle East is evidence of a broken political process, not an inevitable outcome of Offensive Realism.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> In the United States too, a quarter of the country’s Confucius Institutes have been shut down in recent years. Universities no longer wanted to give legitimacy to an institution that defended fundamentally different values. Well, that makes a statement about the purpose of a university.
- Animats 5y agoMore have been shut down than that.[1] They're a combination of a propaganda operation and a surveillance system for Chinese students in the US. [1] https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/how_many_confucius_institutes_are_in_the_united_states https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/how_many_confucius_institu...
- _Microft 5y agoAre you familiar with the „paradox of tolerance“ already? You can read about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance First paragraph copied for your convenience: „The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.“
- rgoulter 5y agoI think that summary misses out how much Popper argues should be tolerated. e.g. in the quote in the article, Popper writes: > In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sudosysgen 5y ago
- Animats 5y agoWell, that long, favorable article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung ought to help. That's a well respected newspaper. Published since 1780.
- guerrilla 5y agoYou're underselling it a little. NZZ is the German-language Swiss newspaper of record, the NYT of Switzerland.
- systemvoltage 5y agoYou're overselling NYT I think. It's still one of the reputable sources of USA but I have some reservations.
- guerrilla 5y agoI see no conflict between utter distrust for the NYT and the fact that it is indeed the paper of record for the US [1]. I was even going to say that it lends little credibility to the story itself, which should have to stand on its own merit, but it does speak to the impact of the story in Switzerland and possibly abroad. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record
- systemvoltage 5y agoFair enough. Thx for the color.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stainforth 5y agoThe supervisor is a coward and should be known as one.
- mdp2021 5y ago> She had «no desire to receive emails like this because of one of my doctoral students.»
- pacman2 5y agoIs she? I love China and if somebody pulls a stunt like that that may blow up in my face I would take action too. Think about if you were in CS and a student of your would post some ISIS shit on the internet and you were threatened with a travel ban to the US. I think most people would think twice.
- Beldin 5y agoI am in CS. If a student of mine posted "ISIS shit", I'd want nothing to do with that person for personal reasons, irrespective of professional consequences.
- ivalm 5y agoSupporting free Hong Kong and Taiwan isn’t really comparable to supporting ISIS. The “he is an anti Chinese racist” rhetoric seems stretched by the fact that he spent so much time there, his romantic partner is Chinese, he seems to have a friends network there.
- _tik_ 5y agoHaving a Chinese partner is not guaranteed for not racism. This reminds me of the local case. A British Expat married to a local and posting racist comments on social media. His defense was the local failed to understand the British joke.
- mvc 5y agoAh yes. The old, "I can't be racist. I have black friends" defense.
- blobbers 5y agoChinese studies student critical of government "received" a fellowship from chinese government, met "girlfriend" in Wuhan. Girlfriend is a plant by Chinese government. Open your eyes. And on top of this, this comment is downvoted.
- jollybean 5y agoIt's a serious issue. One party speaks with on voice, everyone else thousands of voices, and not even a single world leader other than maybe the US President can get away with saying something. There needs to be more concerted effort.
- exo-pla-net 5y agoThis is an article spun to make controversy out of nothing. The narrative is that a student tweeted something critical about China, and the CCP pressured his advisor into dropping him. The reality is that the student published a tweet that "depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes". This understandably was perceived as racist by a Chinese student in Canada, who complained to the advisor. The advisor agreed and dropped her racist-seeming doctoral student. The CCP wasn't involved. Nobody cared about his criticism of China. It was his racist-looking tweet that got him dismissed. Edit: But yes, the CCP can have a chilling effect on free speech. See the Blitzchung controversy. This article is just a non-story.
- javert 5y agoFor anyone else wondering if the above commenter is a Chinese propaganda account, you can see from his or her comment history that that is not the case.
- ipnon 5y agoLest ye incur the wrath of dang, HN newbies, accusing others of astroturfing or hidden agendas is against the guidelines.
- javert 5y ago> Lest ye incur the wrath of dang, HN newbies, accusing others of astroturfing or hidden agendas is against the guidelines. For people who are having trouble parsing that: I am not an HN noob and I did not accuse anyone of astroturfing. The opposite, on both counts.
- exo-pla-net 5y agoI'm afraid I may have dragged you down with me. Johnny thought he saw CCP behind the tree, so the surrounding transnational region needs to be firebombed as a precautionary measure. One has to go along with it, or one is immediately court marshaled as a secret CCP sympathizer. Anyway, now that we're at the bottom of the comment thread and just talking to each other, thanks for vouching for me. You probably saved me from being hammered even deeper into the downvote pit.
- ramraj07 5y agoThe professor should be fired and the university punished (doubtful), but the student was also an idiot to do what he did. It’s not like he was some random guy who just tweeted at China, he lived in wuhan for years and has actual family there now, being critical of a totalitarian government in that scenario is the height of monumental stupidity. It’s ironic that the article paints him as methodological and thoughtful because he seems anything but in his actions.
- new299 5y agoReminds me of the Shaw quote: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
- TechnoTimeStop 5y agoAye! Fuck the oppressive CCP shithole agenda!
- ipnon 5y agoBut nominally, you can be a political fool in Switzerland without professional consequence.[a] It seems he is being forced to play by the social rules of China in Switzerland. It's fair to say his tweets could jeopardize his ability to return to China and secure a professorship or research position, but to suffer professional consequences in Switzerland, in the heart of Europe, for Chinese political incorrectness is unprecedented. [a] For example, in America you can post on Facebook about MAGA or tweet about BLM and you will rarely if ever lose your job or doctorate candidacy.
- casualracism 5y agoAs I said in another comment, in the U.S., if you’re an African American studies PhD student and you post a racist cartoon depicting black stereotypes, it’s not hard to imagine losing your doctorate candidacy.
- casualracism 5y agoNot sure what the timeline is here. TFA strongly implies it’s a tweet on March 21 inciting a response on March 28, but buries the lede about the racist cartoon posted at an unknown time that the professor claims to have received an email about. I’m sure political factors play the leading role here, but it’s long past the point where you can casually post racist cartoons and act surprised when you’re hit by undesirable consequences. Imagine an African American studies PhD student casually posting racist cartoons depicting black stereotypes. People have been disciplined for much less (e.g. that professor who spoke a common Chinese phrase resembling the n word several times to caution students and later got suspended). And before you accuse me of things, I’m a long time HN user and I’m not paid to comment. Using a throwaway for radioactive topics.
- hunglee2 5y agooriginal tweets need to contained within articles like this. Timelines should be standard, before the body of the argument. Way too easy to spin a narrative for an audience hungry to believe.
- alex_smart 5y ago>TFA strongly implies it’s a tweet on March 21 inciting a response on March 28, but buries the lede about the racist cartoon posted at an unknown time that the professor claims to have received an email about. I continue to be amazed with how creative propaganda can be. It is a simple misdirection (but oh how effect, just read the comments here). There is a paper trail showing what tweet the pushback had been about but the article still takes the liberty to draw up a strawman, and concludes -- Criticising the CCP is supposed to be «Neo-Nazi» like? Hawww..... One thing I have realized over time is that it is one thing to recognize deficiencies in an argument you are against, and a completely different thing to recognize the same in arguments for a cause that you do believe in.
- lixtra 5y ago> He asked via email: «Do you engage in some degree of self-censorship? Do you think it would be too dangerous for me to open a Twitter account?» > Although he received no response, he began tweeting in mid-March. Note: Sometimes, silence is a very loud answer.
- queuebert 5y agoAs a PhD advisor myself, this is telling. I always respond to all of my students' emails. This suggests a poor relationship between them already exists before the tweeting.
- kepler1 5y agoYes, some shame on the advisor, department/program for folding under such threats, but let me ask this: What was the guy seeking in posting accusatory political opinions about the Chinese government on Twitter? Attention, that's what. The thing that everyone on Twitter wants. He got it, and now is unhappy with the result. He's not totally without some responsibility here.
- wickedsickeune 5y ago"She was dressed provocatively"
- kepler1 5y agoWhy are you equating a guy posting opinions specifically designed to publicly criticize a country's government with a woman being taken advantage of against her will?
- roenxi 5y agoI don't want to dismiss Chinese influence as a threat to Western values; but we have to keep this in perspective. China is thrice the population of the US and has a comparatively sized (arguably a bit larger, arguably a bit smaller) economy. We expect their influence to catch up with their size and be comparable with the US government. The US government has long reach and a strong grip (eg, Assange, Snowden, the general pretence that their ongoing aggressive military posture is legitimate, synchronisation of global norms for intellectual property to American interests, Hollywood, etc).
- divbzero 5y agoHow many other countries would threaten visa denial against the supervisor of a student with 10 Twitter followers? I happen to think the student’s tweets expressed extreme and unfounded views, but they hardly warrant such retaliation from one of the world’s most powerful countries.
- perihelions 5y agoThe US itself denies visas over the political views of associated people. This is just one example, but a high-profile one: https://www.techspot.com/news/81644-harvard-student-denied-entry-us-over-friends-social.html https://www.techspot.com/news/81644-harvard-student-denied-e... ("Harvard student was denied entry in the US over friends' social media activity") discussed here at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20816774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20816774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20848359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20848359 One can only speculate how much worse the PRC's system is. The professor's fears are quite rational (I needn't say I wholeheartedly condemn her actions, and hope she's fired).
- divbzero 5y agoThank you. I find this only slightly less disturbing than China’s behavior. Stopping a visitor at the border for social posts of acquaintances is almost as bad as writing nasty emails threatening to do so. (Edit: Ismail was ultimately granted entry [1] but still shameful incident and disturbing that it could happen at all.) [1]: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/9/3/harvard-student-turned-away-arrives/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/9/3/harvard-student-...
- thew2434234 5y agoYes, China should instead be a soft banana-republic like India and surrender its whole historiography and narrative, and thereby its own self-understanding, to the West. Then, if someone speaks up for India or the Indian society, they can all be called "Hindutva" and then the West can ban them from the Indology conferences and the academics can all rejoice for having banned the Swastika-worshipping "original" Nazis. (sarcasm, yes, but everything noted above has happened in Indology. apparently, according to these worthies, Hindus are the original Nazis too - no I'm not kidding. explains the insidious anti-Hindu sentiment in the West.)
- guerrilla 5y agoNationalism isn't simply speaking up for onesself. In any case, what instances are you refering to? You assure us that this happened but didn't bother linking to anything. That's not an efficient way to convince people of something.
- traveler01 5y agoThe content of this article clearly shows how hurt the concept of free speach is nowadays. You tweet some stuff and you're life is destroyed. Simple. No warning or whatsoever, you just destroy your life because you angered China.
- cblconfederate 5y agoOr you angered america, or the US political parties Or women or trans people or nonbinary people. It's like , if you don't draw a hard line, the virus keeps expanding
- thelopa 5y agoLook, I get it. Cancel culture isn’t healthy for our society, but can we be realistic about our examples? JKR is doing just fine after posting her transphobic screed last year. The various lawmakers across the US that sponsored anti-trans legislation this year haven’t been forcibly removed from office. Leading up to the presidential debates last year, speakers at the RNC made explicitly transphobic comments. Trump himself has started to wade into the fray. None of these people have lost their jobs, livelihoods, or platforms as a result. Yeah, some people decided they didn’t want to read JKR’s books any more, but when her essay is being read in debates in both UK parliament and US congress I wouldn’t exactly say she lost her platform. I’m not saying backlash to anti-trans sentiment doesn’t exist, but can we at least acknowledge that the backlash isn’t nearly as severe as you’re implying?
- cblconfederate 5y agoFirst of all , these are rich people whose removal would be largely inconsequential to their livelihood. Under them you 'll find a sea of people who are self-censoring because their positions are much more precarious, and they see the whims of the mob. > haven’t been forcibly removed from office Second i find this insinuation that a mob should be able to remove elected people from office problematic
- 5y ago
- sleiben 5y ago“The next day, he found he couldn’t access his messages. An IT technician told him on the phone that his account didn’t exist." Uff… reads like a paragraph from 1984 to me.
- imwillofficial 5y agoUff, sounds like he played stupid games and won stupid prizes
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jacksonkmarley 5y agoWell, 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.
- curiousgal 5y agoThank 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.
- anfelor 5y agoYes, 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.
- curiousgal 5y agoHonestly, 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.
- abbassi 5y agoI'm happy she is dismissed. No student should be a propaganda tool, especially in a continent that Julian Assange is in jail in worse conditions (like those of Stalin) for doing journalism and revealing the war crimes of so-called democratic countries.
- bmn__ 5y agoYou seem to have misunderstood the article, she is not dismissed. Nothing of consequence happened to her for dropping the student.
- fmajid 5y agoThe Confucius Institutes should be closed and the mission of representing Chinese culture transferred to Singapore or Taiwan.
- bigbillheck 5y ago> the mission of representing Chinese culture transferred to Singapore or Taiwan This is certainly an interesting view. Who would do the transferring?
- fmajid 5y agoAll governments regulate agents of foreign powers, and thus can shut down the Confucius Institutes. Whether the replacement is called the Lee Kuan Yew Institute or the Chiangmai Kai Shek Institute is immaterial. The Chinese certainly don’t allow foreign NGOs on their territory and would have no grounds to complain.
- ceilingcorner 5y agoMeta comment: this story is the future of geopolitics. A confusing mess of different narratives, each backed up with a cornucopia of digital “evidence.” It is still unclear to me exactly what happened here. All I can be certain of is that all participants are incentivized to spin a story in their own favor.
- phreeza 5y agoRegardless of the merits of this case, I think it is interesting to also consider if the reverse could conceivably happen. Could a Chinese professor become worried about travel visa to the US because one of their students starts posting things critical of the US? I think for a Chinese professor the answer is perhaps not immediately obvious, but if you switch it to a professor from an Arabic country, I think the concern would definitely be valid. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if there is a lot of self-censorship like this going on already. Edit: in fact, in a different thread, perihelions posted an instance of such a visa denial happening in the US.
- fakedang 5y agoI don't know how evident it is in the West, but what you mentioned for the US is very true, not just for Arab countries but also South Asian and African visitors. Around more than a decade back, when our school had planned for a trip to NASA, I remember the teachers and the visa guide aggressively asking all the students who had applied to scrub anything political off their social media and their public profiles elsewhere. The US visa officials are also the most hostile lot, and while I didn't experience much hassle during my interview (I guess because I worked in a white shoe firm which was sponsoring the visa), I was witness to seeing a Sikh family get intensely rattled and rammed during their process.
- NotChina 5y agoIt wasn't us.
- kqvamxurcagg 5y agoI think the moderators should carefully examine those accounts posting in this thread. There seems to be elements of counter intelligence or information warfare.
- ipnon 5y ago>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Ice_cream_suit 5y ago"received a message from a Chinese doctoral student doing research at a Canadian university. The writer accuses Gerber of a «racist attack on the Chinese people.» He was referring to a specific tweet: a cartoon that Gerber had posted in response to another user's tweet. It depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes. This drawing circulated on social media in the spring of 2020, and was deemed racist by some users. " Nasty stuff.
- kmfrk 5y agoPreviously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060240.
- echopurity 5y agoIf HN won't stand up for racist or sexist tweets, who will?
- beaunative 5y ago"It depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes" In the report but often neglected. This is exactly the kind of student professors don't want. Obvious bias in the field of research, and what the heck honestly. If I were the professor I would not sponsor the reapplication either. I think the student is well aware he has a weak case, otherwise if it's so obvious that it's because of government intervention, even if his own professor doesn't want to supervise him, it shouldn't be difficult to find a new one (there are plenty, I mean PLENTY, researchers critical of the Chinese government, it shouldn't be hard to find one really), the academic field is actually quite protective towards students when it comes to undue influence from the government in general. Also, the institute he chose to apply to focus on "«strengthen and deepen productive relations with China»". It's not like they've made it unclear. It's quite clear they want to be 'productive' with China. There are plenty who don't, so why does this student applied there? It's like researching the adversary effect of CocoCola at a instutite 'promote understanding of the health benefits of carbonated drinks'. It's not like there is no choice.
- dm319 5y agoThe more I read of the article the less clear cut this looked. Someone has already mentioned the cartoon, but he had deregistered with the university, on the proviso that support from his phd mentor would allow him to return. When his mentor did not want to mentor him anymore he was actually registered at Wuhan rather than St Gallen, so I can see why this would make it complicated for him to continue there. Having done a PhD recently and knowing several who have, around the three year mark can be a difficult time for the student-mentor relationship. There is mention that his mentor claims the student had lost their temper with them prior to this happening, so I wouldn't be surprised if things were strained. Another aspect is the natonality of his mentor. The mentor may have family in China or need to continue strong links with China to continue their career in the field. Regardless of actual Chinese influence, the mentor may simply have been concerned of the impact the student's tweets would have on their career. Obviously still not ideal, but reflects more a 'chilling effect' that comes with heavy handed censorship.
- usr1106 5y agoLegally the university might have done nothing wrong. They had advised him to unregister to play tricks in order to avoid losing his study rights. A trick that is common if you study at more than one university. And works unless there is any kind of problem. However, the message is: If you deal with China today, either don't think, be a coward or a liar. China is an authoritarian country that increasingly exercises its power outside of the country. In Western democracies we are used that you can criticize. Strong democracies tolerate heavy criticism until you get into difficulties, others only weaker kinds. There is no doubt that China is very far from any kind of democracy.
- queuebert 5y agoAs a faculty member and PhD advisor, let me offer my reading between the lines. The student and advisor did not get along already. The student went to China and found a girlfriend. The lockdown separated them. Hormones flared, exacerbating what was probably already a tense situation. The student was increasingly a problem (note the screaming at the advisor mentioned in TFA). The advisor decided that it was no longer worth the effort to maintain the unofficial relationship and broke the promise of supporting the student's future re-enrollment. Dealing with unprofessional students sucks. It's very hard to "fire" grad students for unproductivity or workplace issues, unless they are egregious. In this situation the advisor had a convenient out and took it.
- amrcnimgrnt 5y agoWell I got my PhD, so let me read between your lines ([1]). Faculty have little fiefdoms and they expect students to live on salaries bellow minimum wage. If the advisor is sub-par (i.e. the university made a mistake hiring them) it's incredibly difficult to change advisors without poisoning the relationship with other faculty members. Dealing with sub-par professors sucks. Some are not too bright. Others sexually harass the female students. All are protected by the moat the university builds around them. [1] I'll admit it's a bit weird to see a professor that I'm assuming given the forum, is in a tech field "read between the lines" instead of engaging the facts.
- queuebert 5y agoYou're entirely correct. Academia is broken is so many ways. A lot of my colleagues are wastes of space and some are indeed harmful. I don't think I'm a great advisor either. No one teaches us how to advise students. My take is based entirely on facts of the article interpreted through an advisor's lens rather than that of a journalist trying to get clicks.
- amrcnimgrnt 5y agoYou know what, I owe you an apology for this: "[1] I'll admit it's a bit weird to see a professor that I'm assuming given the forum, is in a tech field "read between the lines" instead of engaging the facts." I'll keep it up in my comment because I despise it when ppl scrub clean what they wrote. Either way, sorry for making it personal.
- amrcnimgrnt 5y agoTo be clear, what happened to this kid is horrible and just demonstrates that we have to get serious on this problem. However this comment annoyed me: "«I'm in Switzerland, not China,» Gerber replied. «I can say what I want here.»" You can tell this kid grew up in the la-la land that is the West, particularly Europe. I find this comment to be an infuriating mix anivete and patronizing. For the naïveté Switzerland is a landlocked country of 10 million people. Tough guys, great companies, great economy, sure. But a minnow. China can and does throw it's weight against people in countries like this. For the patronizing part of the comment, it's the Western attitude of "this can't happen here", or "that will never get to be so bad" typical of people that are 70 years removed from tyranny (I'm Western myself, but my parents lived through a dictatorship). This is the attitude that allows people in the West to compartmentalize all the known abuses (snowden leaks, NSA spying on European leaders, Big Tech squashing our rights, etc) and live in a permanent state of double-think.
- esquivalience 5y agoAnother reading of this is: "freedom of speech is protected in this country". And that is true, not the fairytale you suggest it to be.
- amrcnimgrnt 5y agoI didn't suggest anything, generally I avoid suggestion. It's pusillanimous. Switzerland has a lot of freedom, certainly compared to China and other European countries. It's without a doubt my favorite country, one I'd want to live in. But, as we're finding out, the "free speech protections" that we drone on about are only as good as we are willing to insist on. "freedom of speech is protected in this country" is meaningless if it only restricts government from silencing its citizens. Companies and powerful interest groups can and do restrict the speech of people, and I don't see the Swiss government rushing to pass laws to force Google to stop censoring. Anyway, freedom of speech protections in Switzerland are not that good compared to, say, the US. You can't, for example, criticize islam (I hate when people mock islam, btw). From Article 261 of the Swiss Penal Code: "Any person who publicly and maliciously insults or mocks the religious convictions of others, and in particularly their belief in God, or maliciously desecrates objects of religious veneration, any person who maliciously prevents, disrupts or publicly mocks an act of worship, the conduct of which is guaranteed by the Constitution, or any person who maliciously desecrates a place or object that is intend- ed for a religious ceremony or an act of worship the conduct of which is guaranteed by the Constitution, is liable to a monetary penalty.277" So Charlie Hebdo (who are disgusting, btw) should have been fined in Switzerland. Btw, I'm pretty sure a Zurich museum would have no trouble displaying artwork depicting Mary as a whore. Not unless muslims, rightly, get upset about the depiction of the most revered woman in Islam. But it gets worse: "Any person who publicly incites hatred or discrimination against a person or a group of persons on the grounds of their race, ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation, any person who publicly disseminates ideologies that have as their object the systematic denigration or defamation of that person or group of persons, any person who with the same objective organises, encourages or participates in propaganda campaigns, any person who publicly denigrates or discriminates against another or a group of persons on the grounds of their race, ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation in a manner that violates human dignity, whether verbally, in writing or pictorially, by using gestures, through acts of aggression or by other means, or any person who on any of these grounds denies, trivialises or seeks justification for genocide or other crimes against humanity, any person who refuses to provide a service to another on the grounds of that person’s race, ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation when that service is intended to be provided to the general public, is liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty." You can drive a Mac truck through that. What does "inciting discrimination" mean? Are the people campaigning to have the veil banned in Switzerland not inciting discrimination? And, for the record, I despise people who mock any and all religions (although valid criticism is very important). But criminalizing mockery and claiming to believe in freedom of speech? That's rich.
- sebastian_89 5y agoThis is classic western/European entitlement. How absolutely annoying.
- wickedsickeune 5y agoIs it "entitlement" to say your opinion publicly?
- sebastian_89 5y agoIt is entitlement to expect other cultures/political situations to treat you like the EU - and then be surprised when they don't.
- sebastian_89 5y agoAnd ignore context? Absolutely.
- almosttoolate 5y agoYou have to understand that any platform that deletes or undermine your words does not deserve your patronage. Get off Twitter and all abhorent anti-social media. Go outside, see nature.
- almosttoolate 5y agoPlease realize that any forum that deletes or undermines the words of its users is not worth your time nor patronage. Twitter is the antithesis of free speech. Stop using it. Period.
- bigbillheck 5y agoThe main question I have is: what was the cartoon?
- echopurity 5y agoIt's interesting how these articles never post that cartoon, huh?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- echopurity 5y agoThis is totally normal where I'm from... https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professors-angry-tweets-on-gaza-cost-him-a-job.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professo...
- paulcarroty 5y ago> The writer accuses Gerber of a «racist attack on the Chinese people.» Interesting, how Chinese people reacts to Winnie Pooh cartoons? Also as "racist attack" or "Nazism threat"?
- arey_abhishek 5y agoIt feels like a bit of overreaction from the professor, unless there were other emails or calls from the Chinese government. If it was just one email, it could also be possible that she just wanted him to find a different advisor and didn't realize that breaking her advisory relationship with the student would leave him in the lurch and without a PHD. All in all a really bad incident for the kid.
- bobthechef 5y agoSomewhat tangential, but it's interesting that this is in St. Gallen. St. Gallen is known for the so-called St. Gallen Mafia which counted among its members the now defrocked sex predator Theodore McCarrick among others who negotiated deals for the Vatican under Francis in China and had a reputation for being pro-CCP in his leanings. Makes me wonder if there is some "Chinese representation" specifically in St. Gallen? Take this quote from the article: "For the last eight years, St. Gallen has also been home to a «China Competence Center,» the aim of which is to «strengthen and deepen productive relations with China»." (Frankly, this sort of content is being censored in the US by BigTech also, so...)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- qwertox 5y ago> His girlfriend was shocked when she saw some of the tweets. Talking with him on the telephone, she begged him to stop. Not because she necessarily disagreed with anything. But because she was worried about retaliation by the Chinese government. «I'm in Switzerland, not China,» Gerber replied. «I can say what I want here.» Shouldn't he have also taken into consideration that this "retaliation" could also be directed towards his girlfriend? Generally, the article raises the feeling of "mistakes have been made". There you have a professor afraid of harming her career, which is understandable, and having the option to play a "is de-registered anyway"-card. Keeping him in the unofficial advisorship and tied to the university can be seen as a friendly, helpful gesture on the part of the university, surely also with the intention to be able to refer to him should he build a successful career. It was a weak point which he should have taken into consideration, yet it would have been difficult to anticipate that it would turn out this way. Wasn't he planning to go back to Wuhan anyway? Why risk it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- silexia 5y agoPeople used to say that by bringing China into the global market, free people's would influence China to be more free. The opposite has actually happened.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoThere is a cultural subcontext that may be missing here: The swiss are fiercely independent people that shun cultural misfits and people that don't respect tradition. They certainly hold in contempt outsiders that go against established groups/ norms / traditions. This is evident in their rules for granting citizenship, which is at the discretion of each canton. Some cantons are particularly fickle and will reject granting citizenship to foreigners living in Switzerland for decades...if the foreigner is "annoying" [1]. This means: a serial complainer, a bad neighbor that does not respect customs. My thinking: PHD student forgot they were part of the local academia community. This group was sensitive to china criticism. Whether this was subtle or not, we wont know. What we know is he went ahead and criticised china, thus becoming a bad neighbor. He was therefore cast out. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/switzerland-citizenship-nancy-holten/513212/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/sw...