New Haven Independent

Yale’s Chinese Scholars File Class Action Discrimination Grievance

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 20, 2005
Further information: Mandi Jackson (203) 915-6667
John Canham-Clyne (203) 668-2064

A majority of the Chinese graduate teachers and researchers on Yale University’s campus today filed a class-action grievance with Dean of the Graduate School on Thursday, charging the Yale administration with a pattern of discrimination on the basis of national origin. The grievance charges that Chinese nationals, heavily recruited by Yale to work in labs and teach undergraduates, face discrimination and double standards from administrators, often resulting in loss of jobs, student status, and visas.

The grievance was prompted by the case of Xuemei Han, of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department. Han has been told by administrators that she is being stripped of funding and must leave the university at the end of the year because she is “not in good academic standing.” Ms. Han has passed all exams and requirements, produced a first-authored paper, passed her language tests, and started her research. The only Chinese scholar in her department, Han says she was told she “was not going to be allowed to stay in the department because no faculty members wanted to work with me.” Han maintains that faculty in her department claim it would be too much work to advise a Chinese student because of language difficulties. She spoke confidently to the crowd of 200 in English.

Han’s case is the latest of a string of cases in recent years in which Chinese scholars have been singled out in their departments for “bad academic standing” and forced to rigorously defend their academic records. Jian Xu, an electrical engineer who faced a similar situation last year, was asked to leave the university last spring but testified in the grievance that he was then expected to stay and work in his lab without pay through the summer months before his visa expired. “There are so many Chinese students facing this problem every year,” said Xu. “Few of them happen to American students. Personally I have never seen one.”

The grievance provides documented evidence of improper behaviors on the part of administrators, including intimidation, erroneous reporting of academic performance, and explicit acts of discriminatory treatment. The grievance seeks specific remedies for Ms. Han’s case and asks for a permanent system of third party dispute resolution for Chinese scholars. More than 300 scholars from the graduate school signed the grievance, including a clear majority of the 274 Chinese scholars on campus.

Electrical engineer Leidong Mao, whose case is documented in the grievance, noted that Yale President Richard Levin is seeking deeper ties with Chinese universities and said discrimination is “an obvious contradiction” to these policies “They want more and more excellent Chinese students to come to Yale. But when Chinese students actually come, they receive such unfair treatment.”

Protesters carried signs in Chinese and English that said “stop discrimination at Yale” and “a truly GLOBAL UNIVERSITY doesn’t DISCRIMINATE.” Speakers included Han and her supporters, as well as the president of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Yale (ACSSY), Cong Huang, who said, “Yale is wasting the potential and hard work of many fine scholars and many valuable scientists. On behalf of the ACSSY, we hope you will fairly investigate these cases and address what we see as a pattern of discriminatory treatment.”

* * * * *

Michael Denning Statement

Statement regarding the Grievance Regarding the Unfair Treatment of Chinese Students at Yale University

October 20, 2005

Yale, President Levin tells us, is a global university not only in ambition but in reality. Yale has sixty separate projects in China including joint research centers with Beijing and Fudan universities. Yet Yale administrators, and probably most members of the university, see the issues facing international students as exceptional or marginal, as the problems of individuals. However, it is clear that the central meaning of the global university is not the conferences on globalization but the tremendous growth of migrant intellectual labor, students and researchers crossing borders to do the work of the global university. “In the science departments of our Graduate School,” President Levin told an audience in India, “over one third or our students come from abroad.” Yale’s research and teaching is being done by these migrant scholars, but Yale, despite its rhetoric of globalization, has yet to recognize their rights and grievances. If Yale is truly a global university, it must be as concerned for the Chinese students and researchers as it is with its partnerships with Chinese universities. An independent grievance procedure that includes representatives of the international students is a necessary step in this direction.

Michael Denning
William R Kenan Jr Professor of American Studies
Director, Initiative on Labor and Culture

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