Letter to the editor: KU still does not get it
To the editor:
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the University of Kansas had leaders with the same moral compass as that possessed by Zdenek Hrib, the mayor of Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic? That is the question that came to mind as I read George Will’s column on Thursday.
Hrib, being a doctor, believes that he has no choice but to publicly condemn “the forced extraction of organs from members of the Muslim Uighur minority and other prisoners of the (Beijing) regime.” He resolutely opposes the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to extinguish Tibetan national identity. He supports Taiwan remaining a free, democratic society and has established a sister-city relationship between Prague and Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.
Unfortunately, KU’s leaders have taken a very different path. They placed KU in the service of the CCP by joining the CCP’s Confucius Institute (CI) propaganda program and consistently failed to condemn even the most brutal and cruel behavior of their CCP partner. And now, when finally closing the KU CI, they still show an inability to understand the wrongs they have committed.
The KU executive vice chancellor’s announcement that KU would close its CI shows that he’s oblivious to the CCP’s goals for its CIs. He basically apologizes to the CCP for closing the KU CI and blames the threats to federal funding created by the U.S. Congress for the decision. His message: A moral compass? Please, CCP, don’t worry about KU leaders having one of those.
Gary J. Bjorge,
Lawrence
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