OPINION:
According to a Miles Yu column earlier this summer, “China’s scholars do not deserve equal footing with Western academics” (Web, June 22), 270,000 Chinese nationals are now studying on U.S. campuses. China, meanwhile, restricts access to information, and only about 1,000 Americans are studying in China.
According to the Mr. Yu: “American academics operate within a culture that prizes free inquiry, open debate, dissent and the pursuit of truth wherever it leads. Chinese scholars operate within a political system that demands unanimity of opinion.”
Another piece in the Times about a Vanderbilt University report says the report concludes “that social justice politics, rather than knowledge, drives much of today’s humanities scholarship” (Vanderbilt report on liberal bias in the humanities sparks outrage in higher education,” Web, July 1).
The report, according to the article, says that scholars committed to social justice feel pressured to find results that confirm that ideology. Anything else will be obscured or suppressed.
China demands unanimity of opinion, and American academic institutions collectively enforce similar, not-apolitical rules here. Researchers publish questionable or false information, our mainstream media reports it as fact and the U.S. public is left to draw misinformed conclusions.
TODD WULF
Appleton, Wisconsin
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