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.
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.
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.
https://www.dw.com/en/china-gets-german-childrens-book-about...
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.
And this is the entirely predictable result.
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 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.
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.
AFAIK, as long as you are registered as a PhD student, you have to pay the fees.
That's easy to pay if you are an ETH employee with a normal salary.
It might not be that easy to pay if you are in Wuhan university, with a Wuhan PhD student "salary".
OT: How much? Undergraduates too?
Bachelors and masters pay fees according to: https://www.epfl.ch/education/studies/en/rules-and-procedure... or https://ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html
Tuition is definitely not free, but also not extortionate.
> 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.
> Now I am not saying he should not have done what he did
We need to stand up and say, he should speak out, he should have spoken out, seeing injustice and oppression.
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.
If you choose to persue these opportunities, you must understand there are tradeoffs and conditions.
Understanding the situation is one thing; acquiescing to it, participating, and not trying to change it are another.
Their dedication to academic integrity is suspect.
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.
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.
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
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.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/8/27/incoming-freshm...
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/02/denied-entry-united-states...
(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 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.
One of the original journalists published another article two days later that voices this criticism more clearly: https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/china-und-die-hsg-wo-die-angst-re...
> 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.