BEIJING
— He lectured students about the trespasses of the Communist Party,
publicly belittled the country’s mighty propaganda minister and issued
frequent demands for an end to single-party rule in China.
But in voting two weeks ago to dismiss Xia Yeliang,
an economist, from his teaching post at Peking University, university
officials say, they weighed only one criterion: his performance as an
academic.
“He
just wasn’t a good teacher,” Sun Qixiang, dean of the school of
economics, said Friday in an interview. “Politics had nothing to do with
this decision.”
In
the week since Professor Xia was dismissed, university officials have
been buffeted by criticism that their decision was in retaliation for
his activism against the government. The Committee of Concerned
Scientists issued a letter
condemning the vote, and faculty members at a number of educational
institutions around the world have been questioning their colleges’
cooperative arrangements with one of China’s best universities.
“A
university is an open forum for exploring truth, and sharing opinions
and academic freedom is the foundation for its existence,” a group of
professors at National Taiwan University wrote in an open letter this week.
“Suppressing that freedom by political means constitutes a major
obstacle to exploring truth and destroys the spiritual cornerstone of a
university.”
But
Professor Xia’s colleagues say such criticism is unfair, and insist
that politics played no role in their decision. The vote was 30 against
renewing his contract and three in favor, with one abstention, according
to officials.
On
Friday, three economics professors along with Ms. Sun, the dean,
gathered in a university conference room to defend their votes, saying
Professor Xia, who had been teaching at the university for a decade, had
been repeatedly urged to improve his teaching style, which they
described as deeply unpopular with students. In recent years, they said,
he had racked up more than 340 negative student reviews, earning him
the worst teaching record among the university’s 60 or so instructors
during three evaluations. They added that he had published only one
paper in recent years, an important factor in determining whether to
renew faculty contracts every three years.
“We
had hoped he could improve his teaching and research,” said Li Qingyun,
a professor of economics who has taught at the university for more than
three decades. “This is from the bottom of my heart.”
In
an interview on Friday, Professor Xia, 53, defended his academic
performance and maintained his insistence that the vote was politically
motivated, citing warnings from the university’s Communist Party
secretary that mentioned his online pro-democracy writings. He said he
was notified only once about his bottom ranking in teaching evaluations,
not three times as university officials assert, and noted that 340
negative evaluations represented a small portion of the thousands of
students he had taught over the years.
“All
such records are in their hands right now, so they can say whatever
they want,” he said of administrators. He added that his name had
appeared in a number of publications since 2008, including two articles
that are readily available online. “They are lying,” he said.
There
is little dispute that Professor Xia’s classroom style could be
polarizing. Most of the 30 anonymous reviews posted on a popular teacher
evaluation Web site, Pinglaoshi,
or Judge the Teacher, were positive. “He’s a good professor with a
conscience,” said one comment posted in 2007. “He’s brave and
knowledgeable,” read another.
Xia Yeliang, an economist, has criticized China’s government. Adam Dean for The New York Times
But
in recent days, a number of former students have come forward, most of
them anonymously, to defend the university’s refusal to renew his
contract. Valentina Luo, a former student who attended his class on
principles of economics, said Professor Xia had spent more time boasting
about his time as a visiting scholar in the United States than
lecturing about the fundamentals of finance and market economics.
“I
don’t remember much of his political rants against the government, but
he gives the impression that he doesn’t prepare for his classes,” said
Ms. Luo, who posted her criticisms online. “He just reads the textbook
word by word.”
Another
student who took the same class agreed. “There are many Peking
University teachers who are also outspoken about their political views,
but Xia is one of those that students don’t really like,” said the
student, who asked that only his surname, Sun, be used.
Such criticisms, coupled with Peking University’s strenuous defense
of its decision to let him go, are unlikely to quell the widespread
perception that politics played a role in his termination. Given the
Communist Party’s control over the country’s universities and a
continuing crackdown on dissent — including an ideological campaign
against Western-inspired liberalism — Professor Xia’s supporters say it
is naïve to rule out politics.
Thomas
Cushman, a sociologist at Wellesley College, which entered into an
educational partnership with Peking University this year, said he
remained suspicious, noting that the economist was the first professor
to be dismissed from his department in more than a decade — a fact
confirmed by university officials.
“There
are plenty of people who are bad teachers but who don’t get
terminated,” said Professor Cushman, who helped organize an open letter
in support of Professor Xia that drew the signatures of more than 140
faculty members. “What troubles me is that there is no verifiable
information about his so-called bad teaching.”
Although
the letter calls on Wellesley to reconsider its arrangement with Peking
University, Professor Cushman said he was more focused at the moment on
helping Professor Xia. He said an interdisciplinary program he runs,
the Freedom Project, plans to offer Professor Xia a two-year fellowship pending final approval from Wellesley administrators.
“Given how vulnerable Xia is right now, I think the best thing we can do is to follow through on bringing him here,” he said.
But
officials at Peking University say Professor Xia has damaged its image
at a time when it is trying to ascend to the ranks of the world’s top
universities.
“Beida
didn’t consider politics when dealing with this issue, but now he is
using politics to hijack Beida,” said Ms. Sun, the dean, using a common
shorthand for the school. “We feel badly hurt.”
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