The president of George Washington University has walked back his condemnation of posters critical of the Chinese Communist Party. But his instinct to lash out at the activists responsible for the posters the moment students cried racism is a failure of leadership and an indictment of the current state of higher education.
University President Mark Wrighton initially claimed that he was “personally offended” by the posters he now admits he knew nothing about. He promised to have the “offensive posters” removed “as soon as possible” and said that he, too, was “saddened by this terrible event.”
The posters in question were made by Chinese artist Badiucao, who used Olympic imagery to call attention to China’s human rights abuses, including its genocide of the Uyghurs and oppression of the Tibetans. Simply looking at the posters would be enough to determine that they are not “racist” as students alleged. Apparently, even glancing at them before making his initial statement was too much for Wrighton.
2/ The collection posted in @GWtweets includes 5 posters depicting CCP’s
1. Oppression of the Tibetans
2. Uyghur genocide
3. The dismantling of HK democracy
4. The regime’s omnipresent surveillance systems
5. lack of transparency surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/ITIBiryf4X— 巴丢草 Badiucao?? (@badiucao) February 5, 2022
The posters were reported as being racist by members of the George Washington University Chinese Students and Scholars Association. The CSSA works in tandem with the CCP to monitor Chinese students at universities overseas and spread Chinese propaganda, a fact that has been documented by the New York Times and Human Rights Watch. The CCP regularly labels criticism of its human rights record as “racist” in order to deflect criticism.
So without even bothering to understand what was going on, Wrighton unwittingly parroted propaganda from the most murderous and despotic organization in human history, which has killed more of its own citizens than any regime in history, including Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.
The Chinese government’s influence on American college campuses aside, the problem here was that Wrighton reflexively, impulsively, and immediately decided that someone must be punished just because a small group of students used the magic word: “racism.” University presidents and administrators across the country will trip over themselves to coddle any student or group that makes an accusation of racism, no matter the context, the evidence, or the severity of the alleged incident.
Smith College suspended a janitor and ruined the life of a cafeteria worker over a completely fabricated allegation of racism. The University of Tennessee, as well as Cornell, Xavier, Clemson, and others, revoked admissions to prospective students after online mobs demanded that they be rescinded for racism. Most recently, Georgetown University has turned itself into a daycare center as students demand a place to cry over a tweet they deemed racist because they read below an eighth grade level.
The same mindset that led Wrighton to unwittingly push Chinese propaganda is ingrained in university offices and bureaucracies across the country. The moment a student makes an accusation of racism, universities feel the need to bend to every demand and indulge the race-obsessed hysterics of dim-witted students who think the world revolves around them. This should be a revealing moment for Wrighton and for other universities, but more likely, we will continue seeing more of the same in the future.
