Only time will tell what actually is done.
Students arguing politics, even if uncivil, isn't something you want to be "no tolerance" about. There are lines though, and this is one.
Emotions are good, but excessive emotions without deep understanding is something very different.
I'd say harassment falls into this category, so no proof of collusion with the CCP is needed.
I doubt Purdue (up to now) has any policy saying it’s illegal to report someone to authorities for something they did. Even if those authorities are not popular right now and the thing they did is ok at Perdue but not at home.
Is it a ‘dick move’ and offend our sensibilities? Sure.
But that doesn’t mean it’s any different than if a bunch of folks from the US were at a French university during the 50’s and someone called the FBI telling them that Bob was saying a lot of scary things about communism and just got a Russian Girlfriend and maybe they should look into it.
If it’s true, then of course the FBI is going to look into it. If true, it’s also unlikely to count as harassment. It’s also pretty terrible from 5 different angles.
Yes. Having the right to say or do something doesn't mean it isn't harassment. But more importantly, the 'students' making these reports/threats are acting as agents of the CCP, projecting the CCP's power into an American university, and should be ejected from the country for that. What they were doing was espionage.
I’m sorry, but is this supposed to be a counter point? This kind of behavior would have been ridiculous and unacceptable as well, unless said US citizen had access to state secrets or something of that nature.
And yes, it is taught this way even in semi-rural high schools in southern US states as well (I attended a high school like that myself in GA about 10 years ago). It's like saying "well, US did the whole Trail of Tears thing centuries ago, so we can do a soft-genocide in 2021 as well with Uyghurs".
That type of an argument doesn't sound convincing in the eyes of anyone who doesn't already support what China is doing or some very vocal radical left minority (aka tankies and adjacent groups) in the west. For an example of the latter, just check r/sino, it feels like reading into some parallel universe.
What is happening to the Uighurs is easy for me to point out as crossing the line. But something like Hong Kong? As a westerner I was to support democracy and self determination, but by the same token, Hong Kong is indisputably part of china’s sovereign territory and it seems like a lot of people in the US think it’s ok to promote separatism in another country just because it shares our values. Why don’t I ever hear anyone apply that to our allies? ( cough cough Saudi cough)
I find myself sympathetic to the talkie rhetoric not because I believe in communism, but because I grew up in a generation that was lied into the Iraq war, and see similarities with the mind of nationalism that swept the country in the early 2000s. America never really atoned for abu ghraib, gitmo, cia black sites, signature strikes etc. and to me that is way more relevant to anything that we did in the 19th century.
reflexively I am just repulsed by the nationalistic rhetoric on these issues.
You can harass someone with legal activity, making it illegal. If I show up outside your house everyday and stand on the sidewalk with a concealed weapon that is obviously illegal harassment. Standing on the sidewalk might be legal, carrying a concealed weapon may be legal, harassing someone with either is not.
> But that doesn’t mean it’s any different than if a bunch of folks from the US were at a French university during the 50’s and someone called the FBI telling them that Bob was saying a lot of scary things about communism and just got a Russian Girlfriend and maybe they should look into it.
You're right. This is something we will all need to worry about in the event that we time Travel to the 50's. When that happens, I'll criticize the US government, and encourage the French university to expel the American students. I guess we will need to settle for dealing with today's problems until time travel is possible :(
> If it’s true, then of course the FBI is going to look into it. If true, it’s also unlikely to count as harassment. It’s also pretty terrible from 5 different angles.
Why? I think your false assumption here is that everything the university should care about, the FBI should care about to, which is simply not true. You can outright break the law and the FBI not care depending on the law. I don't know that this falls into the category of things the FBI would deal with.
And you seem to be rather completely misreading my comment.
I’m not saying anything that the CCP, the students, or the university is doing is RIGHT.
I’m saying it happens, and it happens a lot, and it’s happened here in the US recently, and it’s not as illegal or clearly stoppable as people here seem to think.
So watch your ass, anyone that thinks that some moral right to speak truth is going to save you without some serious planning or thinking ahead (like the student who spoke out) - because you may very well be a martyr for a cause you did not plan to.
Because I’m one of those who likes to speak out, and I’ve almost been steamrolled by something before. So watch your ass.
Care to point out which?
> I’m saying it happens, and it happens a lot, and it’s happened here in the US recently, and it’s not as illegal or clearly stoppable as people here seem to think.
Harassment is clearly illegal. It has a legal definition and everything. That being said, it is hard to prove, which is where the complications actually lay. In this case, it seems like there is plenty of evidence though.
> So watch your ass, anyone that thinks that some moral right to speak truth is going to save you without some serious planning or thinking ahead (like the student who spoke out) - because you may very well be a martyr for a cause you did not plan to.
I don't see where this fits into the conversation. Are you saying people shouldn't speak out? Are you saying reporting harassment to the police is bad?
> Because I’m one of those who likes to speak out, and I’ve almost been steamrolled by something before. So watch your ass.
That's pretty vague.
Edit: actually not sure if they are foreign nationals. Maybe someone knows if same applies?
This is a false statement. The only regulation here is title VI and title IX. The administration of a public university is not legally part of the government.
Nope, you are wrong. There have literally been supreme court cases about free speech rights of students.
And yes, the supreme court has found that it is possible for a public school to break the 1st amendment rights of students.
The issue is of harassment and continued education at Purdue; not constitutional rights. It sounds like the pro China students were harassing Zhihao Kong. Purdue can decide what constitute harassment. 100% it's part of of every contract the student signs and agrees to as a part of their acceptance.
What's nonsensical are the allegations that politically engaged pro-PRC/CCP Chinese national students must be state agents. And the disproportionate media attention it gets in the west whenever there's diaspora drama between PRC students and HK/Tibet etc. CCP doesn't need to instruct nationalists to behave like nationalists. 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.
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...
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.