Diarmaid Ferriter: UCD Confucius Institute not above criticism

It is hardly surprising some academics have reservations about Confucius Institutes (CIs) in universities given the totalitarian and brutal regime that promotes and controls them.

CIs are about global empire building by the Chinese one-party state. They are embraced by institutions worldwide that, partly due to inadequate state funding, want the investment that comes with them and the added dimension to the university’s offerings they allow in relation to Chinese language and culture.

What is worrying and disappointing is how far the president of University Cocllege Dublin, Andrew Deeks, went this week in disparaging understandable concerns by some of his colleagues about the Confucius Institute in UCD. In an email to staff he said: “The UCD Confucius Institute for Ireland is a credit to the University and to everyone involved, including the successive Irish governments that have supported it, and something the whole UCD community should be proud of.”

The concerns are not about specific staff members but academic freedom and independence

He went further, however, lacerating those who have dared to challenge the appropriateness of the CI’s agenda: “I have been disappointed by some of the misguided commentary about the UCD Confucius Institute and the UCD Institute for Chinese Studies which has appeared. I would like to remind colleagues of the UCD values of integrity, collegiality, engagement and diversity . . . I have been particularly disturbed by implicit suggestions that the political loyalties of some colleagues can be inferred from their ethnicity, given our ongoing campaign against racism.”

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I have never heard or read criticism of any individual associated with the CI that is based on ethnicity. The concerns are not about specific staff members but academic freedom and independence. Let us not forget that two years ago proposed changes to UCDs academic freedom policy to allow for “divergent approaches” to that freedom due to the desire to drum up business with China and other countries was withdrawn because it was robustly challenged by staff.

The disquiet apparent is not about ethnicity, but the implications of what the Chinese Communist Party in 2011 declared was the mission of the CIs: part of a drive to “create new methods of xuanchuan to strengthen our international right to speak, respond to foreign concerns, improve international society’s understanding of our basic national conditions, concepts of values, road of development, domestic and foreign policies, to display our country’s image of civilization, openness and progress”. That word – xuanchuan – is translated as either “publicity” or “propaganda”, depending on the translator, but there is little doubt another phrase used about the CIs – “soft power projection through education” – is too euphemistic given the record of their sponsors and the attitude in China to academic freedom. Think about current crises: how would the UCD president feel if a Putin-led campaign to spread Russian Institutes globally resulted in a Russian politics course being taught by an arm of that Institute in UCD?

A convincing argument can be made that CI operations facilitate valuable intercultural engagement and exchange, but to suggest that is their sole aim is naive, self-serving and selective. In third-level institutions’ constant quest for funding, compromises may be made and the extent of them needs to be aired, especially given that UCD’s CI has been part funded by the Irish taxpayer. Why, if these operations are so benign and benevolent have there been instances in Canada, the US and Europe of universities severing their links with CIs, including in Ontario, Chicago and Stockholm?

Defenders of the CIs can and do make the case that their influence or perceived threat is overblown

In 2012, the Chinese ambassador to Britain accused CI critics of “cold war thinking”, as if the stranglehold of the regime in China had somehow thawed. Criticisms of the CIs have frequently been labelled as “irresponsible” by the Chinese masters of propaganda.

Whose principles matter here and are they being parked for economic gain? In the words of international relations Prof Christopher Hughes – who was at the centre of a storm about the CI at the London School of Economics – how do you distinguish “the political mission from the cultural” in relation to China? The reality, Hughes argued in a paper in 2014, is that “a one-party state is able to use its growing economic capabilities to influence the work of universities in democratic societies”. It would be very worrying if there was not debate about that in, of all places, a university. As Hughes puts it “the university is understood to be one of the most important institutions shaping the values of democratic society. Its status as an independent source of critical knowledge is important not only for education but also for the healthy development of democracy itself.”

Defenders of the CIs can and do make the case that their influence or perceived threat is overblown, but for the president of Ireland’s largest university to deride legitimate concerns and insist that “the whole community” in UCD should be proud of the CI is both desperate and humiliating.