DIPAC v. Duke CSSA

Apr 17 2008

Posted by: 阿偉 in Current Events

According to the Duke Chronicle, a young Chinese woman, a native of Qingdao, had been harassed because she allegedly made some pro-Tibetan comments and backed Students for a Free Tibet. Apparently, members of the Duke Chinese Students and Scholars Association are behind this harassment. In response, the young woman has been offered protection by the Duke Police Department. Several student groups have also taken the student’s case as their own, including the Duke-Israel Public Affairs Committee (DIPAC), which shares a name with America’s largest lobby group on Capitol Hill. Along with other groups, they have called for the DCSSA to be disbanded.

Some readers might recall that six months ago, a Jewish student at George Washington University complained of swastikas appearing on her door. In a flurry of media attention, local and national news made her a media darling, swooning over the possibility to demonize a vile anti-semite. This turned out to be a mere publicity stunt and a cry for attention. To draw a parallel, there’s no way to rule out the possibility that this situation as well have been exaggerated by the liberal, slightly pessimistic ‘journalists’ who seem to dominate college newspapers. And perhaps ‘Grace Wang’ is merely doing this to get attention by jumping on the bandwagon and shouting “oppression” whenever she is the least bit offended.

I’m basing this on personal experience alone. I am undeniably ethnically Chinese, and personally do a lot of work (mostly of a non-political nature) with the local university’s CSSA. We often do talk about politics, and I find them more open-minded than some either American liberals or conservatives. I have often harshly criticized the Communist regime, without retribution. Even when I went on the record two weeks ago, before an audience of Chinese visa students, Chinese-Americans, and Americans, calling for an end to violence in Tibet and internal investigations for human rights, I was heartily congratulated, even though I had been very clear in denouncing the Chinese government’s allegations of the Dalai Lama organizing the riots.

I find it curious that DIPAC is getting involved with this. This is certainly not a concern of Israel’s. Let us ask the perhaps rhetorical question, that, if this had been an ethnically Jewish student being called a “self-hating Jew” for speaking on behalf of Palestine, would there have been such an uproar? I find it doubtful.

However, this is a double standard between not just Jews and non-Jews, but also between liberals and non-liberals (note that I do not say conservatives to avoid confusion). Again, I am basing this on personal experience and observations. People with socially conservative views are routinely harassed on some college campuses, with no retribution. A year ago, I was harassed repeatedly for voicing my opposition to my university’s decision to invite the anti-Muslim, feminist, lesbian, socialist, and revisionist Irshad Manji to speak, and for suggesting a more moderate author, Sayyed Hossein Nasr. Various e-mails originating from a few left-wing groups stated that some people wished I’d “get killed by suicide bombers,” “be stood up against a wall and shot,” or “be sent to a gulag and starved to death,”and so on. I didn’t take these very seriously, and within a few weeks, the clamour died down.

Backlash against a student for speaking her mind is not appropriate. However, even if a few pepole have acted inappropriately, the organization as a whole, and those who did not react should not be held accountable. Many of the posts on the forum simply consisted of insults against the student, which don’t seem to represent a real threat. We need to be careful not to get caught up in such media furor, but to make righteous and objective judgements.

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