Nobody likes to face it.
But they all do. Eventually.
In one week, Western will send a 22-person delegation to China on a mission to build relationships with likeminded academic institutions. The trip, maybe our largest internationalization team ever assembled, builds on existing partnerships and, perhaps most importantly, looks to strike up some new ones.
I have covered dozens of these over the years; cities, companies, even universities get wide-eyed at the possibility of becoming partners with the economic superpower.
But this trip, as gaudy as it looks on paper, is exactly the kind of bold move necessary if we are serious about internationalization.
It’s just that 800-pound panda in the room that keeps me from getting too giddy: Human rights.
That’s always the sticking point, right? Otherwise, China is all opportunity and no downside. The market is incredible – 1.3 billion people. But the government’s record on human rights is insanely terrible.
China still believes in old-fashioned, iron-fisted control. Despite its best efforts to put on a happy face – be it hosting the Olympics, building stronger trade, even partnering on student exchanges – the specter of its continued disregard for human rights and international law keeps rearing its ugly head.
Just this week, a disabled human rights lawyer and her husband were jailed for two years for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” with the Chinese government. Her crime? She protested against land grabs to make way for development, including the 2008 Olympics, and launched legal battles for those forcibly evicted from their homes.
Add them to a list including Liu Xiaobo, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Gao Zhisheng, China’s best-known human rights lawyer; and maybe hundreds, even thousands, of others.
Certainly, nobody ever wants to offend their Chinese hosts by bringing the subject up during a visit. It’s also a safe bet the colleagues Western officials will meet have no influence over the policies of the central government. Holding a Chinese professor accountable for her government’s human right violations is like holding me accountable for Guantanamo Bay.
Given China has provided this university with some of its best minds – students, faculty and staff – I am sure our leadership has considered the weight of human rights, although understandably not excited to jump forward and discuss it.
But like everyone else, they will be forced to do so. Eventually.
Once we get deeper into agreements, and the stakes get raised, we are going to have a long conversation. Look at those who have gone before us.
Many corporations, who led the push into China, are starting to feel the backlash. Anyone fully satisfied with that iPhone purchase after the working conditions in the company’s Foxconn plant came to light? There’s no app for regret.
We are a wonderful university, and should hold ourselves to the highest standards.
When you send a Faculty of Law dean, who hosts the annual Pensa Lecture on Human Rights, or when you send a Social Science dean, who oversees a Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, we cannot ignore the conversation.
Many companies and nations, Canada and the United States included, no longer feel the need to balance moral responsibility with financial opportunity. In a perfect world, morality should know no politics, no dollar figure. But as companies, as nations, we have decided otherwise. We have no problem shaking a bloody hand if it means sealing a good deal.
I don’t want to see universities go down that road. We should never mute the powerful voice we have used so often to speak out for others who have none.
These issues shouldn’t be raised simply to muck up the works. But we need to be clear where we stand.
We are doing the right thing. There are plenty of reasons to be in China, and our delegation will explore many of them soon enough. And perhaps our connections, and the hundreds of other connections to hundreds of other universities around the globe, will be the seeds of change in China.
It would be wonderful if nobody had to ever face this conversation again.