A top-tier Chinese university has fired Zhang Ming, dean of political sciences, for writing about academic freedom and criticizing the country’s academic woes. Officials from Renmin University of China told Zhang that he should be punished for “breaking the rules.” Zhang’s blog contained articles that detailed a dispute with a superior and attacked the “bureaucratization of Chinese colleges.”
Zhang said in a March 12 blog post that he had irritated his superior last year by telling the media that the university had withheld some dissertation subsidies from graduate students.
In addition, Zhang’s superior was upset at him for defending a colleague that he believed was the victim of wrongdoing at the hands of an academic panel which selected members according to rank rather than academic achievement.
While this isn’t as serious a punishment as what Abdel Kareem Soliman received in Egypt, it still illustrates the blogging freedom we take for granted here in the US. Although I think Zhang was wrong to publish a dispute with his superior, I commend him for speaking out in favor of academic freedom, and I very much respect all of the bloggers around the world who speak out against what they don’t believe in, even in the face of punishment. Keep writing! Slowly but surely freedom of speech will circulate throughout the world.
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