There’s no assuming going on. These students explicitly threatened reporting him to the Chinese government, and did so using their registered accounts in online chat so we know exactly who it was.

That's called an allegation, an assumption. And alleging students said some dumb shit is different than proving collusion with PRC gov unless Purdue can dig up files from PRC MSS. In the meantime, the parsimonious answer is kids playing with PRC cancel culture, because to my knowledge there hasn't been a single proven allegation of PRC kids directly reporting other PRC nationals on western campus. Plenty of yellow journalism alleging collusion from the last few years, but zero expulsions despite China Initiative cracking down on campus harder than ever. That should tell you something. If anything I hope Kong / Purdue hits up the proper authorities and finally get some clarity on the extends of the issue other than non-stop news cycle weasel allegations. IMO the likely outcome is dumb kids trigger cancel culture drama over social media, and again free speech =/= freedom from consequences in other jurisdictions.

Two giant paragraphs that are largely irrelevant as well as inaccurate. Purdue has a framework to work with to adjudicate situations regarding the student experience. We will see how it plays out. Your emotional response to some trigger doesn't have anything to do with what is being discussed.

The students followed and threatened, that’s harassment. Even if it was legal, the campus can still expel them if it violates their standards. The campus is not bound by the first amendment, as it is not the government.

>Rich Chinese kids with social media are playing the same cancel culture game against the out-group and that just happens to be aligned/exploitable for PRC censorship.

So? It's a crappy game and we should stop letting them play it. Making up accusations of being a CIA agent is not better than making up accusations of being a PLA agent.

> it's a stretch to assume the students did anything other

No, because at least one (edit: two!) incidents like this has already repeatedly happened elsewhere. Chinese students sabotaged a panel at Brandeis University about Uyghurs ("Viewers interrupted a Harvard-educated lawyer as she tried to describe her brother’s plight in a concentration camp, scrawling “bullshit” and “fake news” over his face on the screen and blaring China’s national anthem." - which is pretty clearly harassment), and an Emerson College student was subjected to doxxing and death threats[2]. Given these incidents, and that the university president released a letter about this (so it's not just an unverified social media post), the reasonable assumption is that the students did engage in harassment.

Moreover, yes, students in a foreign country reporting an incident legal in that country to their repressive home government is definitely "collusion".

> Freedom of speech in west =/= freedom from consequences

Um, no, that's incorrect. "Freedom of speech" means that you have the ability to express the opinions that you want to without consequences, by definition (the two components of freedom of speech are the ability to express opinions and the protection from "consequences" (which is a misleading way to say "active retribution") of that expression).

In the United States incarnation, the First Amendment is a specific instance of a law protecting freedom of speech that prevents the federal government from punishing you from saying what you want, modulo a few edge cases (most of which aren't restrictions on freedom of speech/expression so much as restrictions on particular utterances (e.g. yelling "fire" in a crowded theater) or knowledge (disseminating classified information)).

But, beyond the government (which is the only entity that the First Amendment applies to), other organizations or individuals can take pro-free-speech or anti-free-speech positions, which (again) means freedom from consequences due to that speech.

The CCP here is clearly taking an anti-free-speech position by threatening the student through his parents due to an opinion that he has expressed about Tianamen Square.

> Rich Chinese kids with social media are playing the same cancel culture game

Also completely false. "Cancel culture" means that you're attacked by the culture specifically, which includes just about everything except the government.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-china...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29593320

> e.g. yelling "fire" in a crowded theater

The legal argument behind that concept isn't that "yelling fire in a crowded theater" is about the particular utterance but that it was a metaphor for the government's legal ability to restrict free-speech when it presents a "clear and present danger".

The legal case where the metaphor was introduced was a unanimous decision allow charging some under the espionage act for pamphleteering against the draft in WWI. It considered among the worst Supreme Court decisions, has been partially overturned and is an odd example to reference when arguing that these "edge-cases" don't amount to real restrictions on speech. This particular "edge-case" decision upheld the criminal prosecution of anti-war activists for their speech.

Harassment on US soil, sure. That's under US perview and should be addressed by relevant US instruments. But freedom from consequences in a foreign jurisdiction? Besides being legally wrong, that's peak American exceptionalism. CCP is allowed to take anti-freespeech position on PRC soil, even triggered by incidents on foreign soil, that's PRC law (and HK NSL). They're not bound by US free speech, by design. PRC cancel culture involves flesh search and generating enough attention to warrant government action. Fixating on US definitions doesn't magically absolve the fact that there are consequences occurring on PRC soil according to PRC rules outside of US/host country purview.