To the editor:

On Monday, the University of Chicago will close its Confucius Institute. This decision follows a petition signed by more than 100 faculty members this past spring that called for closing the institute. The petition expressed the concern that, in operating the institute in partnership with the Chinese government, the university had ceded control over faculty hiring, course content and programming to that government.

In shutting down its Confucius Institute, the University of Chicago followed the recommendation of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to all American universities. As the AAUP stated in June of this year, “Confucius Institutes function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom.”

Professor Bruce Lincoln, the Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at Chicago, and an organizer of the anti-Confucius Institute petition, commented after learning that the Confucius Institute was being closed, “I do think that in the end our top administrators defended not only the dignity of our institution, but the integrity of the academy in general.”

What a contrast with the situation at Kansas University! This weekend, the KU Confucius Institute is holding a two-day celebration commemorating the Chinese Communist Party decision to establish a global Confucius Institute program. How sad that, for KU administrators, Chinese government money and trips to Beijing are more important than defending KU’s dignity and the integrity of the academy in general.