Yale’s first connection with China dates back to 1835 when Yale graduate Peter Parker, class of 1831, opened China’s first Western hospital in Guangzhou. In 1854, Yung Wing, a Chinese national recruited to Yale by Parker, became the first person from China to earn an American degree. 180 years later, Yale’s relationship with China has exploded, connecting thousands of students and faculty involved in various research, scholarship, and exchange programs.
The opening of the Yale Center Beijing marks the latest development in Yale’s burgeoning collaboration with China. Unveiled at a conference held in Beijing last week, the center is funded by a handful of alumni. Stretching 16,500-square-feet in the city’s Chaoyang District, the complex features meeting rooms, classrooms, a lecture hall, and office and working spaces to be used by any members of the Yale community living or working in China, including the over 150 current faculty conducting China-related research. Donald Filer, executive director of the Yale Office of International Affairs, described the Center’s creation as a reasonable next step in the enhancement Yale’s academic exploits in China. “Every year we have scores of undergraduates heading to China for language study, internships, independent research, and many other reasons,” Filer said in an interview with the Herald. “Having this physical place provides us with the opportunity to extend many of the things that we’ve already been doing. This center gives us a base that’s ours.”
In a press release on the opening of the center, Yale alumni donor Neil Shen, SOM ’92, who chairs the center’s Advisory Committee, also described the Center as a meeting ground for all of those involved in these academic and cultural experiments. “We admire how Yale has been convening so many thought leaders in China,” Shen said. “We want this center to facilitate and accelerate those efforts and to cultivate academic and culture exchanges across broad range of subjects between China and the U.S. This can have widespread benefits for the future of China and, we feel, for Yale as well.”
The center is by no means a pioneering venture in the region—Harvard, John Hopkins, and New York University are among throngs of American universities that have established campuses in multiple major Chinese cities. In fact, it is only the latest of Yale’s ventures on the Asian continent, the most famous (and controversial) to date being the partnership between Yale and the National University of Singapore. But the creation of Yale Beijing is nevertheless a milestone. As an impressive structure in the center of China’s capitol, it is a physical testament to Yale’s desire to forge collaboration with an economic and political superpower. The opening of the center can be regarded as a turning point in the University’s overseas expansion and its attitudes towards exporting its particular brand of higher education to environments that are decidedly different from its New Haven home.
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Only in its infancy, the center’s primary purposes remain unknown. At the inaugural conference, both Yale faculty and faculty from Chinese institutions conveyed that the new opportunities offered by the center would largely benefit graduate programs based on Yale’s New Haven campus for now. On the first day of the conference, Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies announced a dual degree program with the Tsinghua University School of Environment in Beijing. In the coming months, a number of Yale’s graduate schools will also begin to use the center in collaboration with peers in China.
Currently, there are no programs for undergraduates designed to make use of the center, though Filer believes that with time, more programs will appear as individuals and departments begin to express interest.
“The center’s just opened,” Filer said. “There will be a lot happening there in the future, and it will depend on people’s interests. Different people have expressed interest in using the space. A number of faculty members in the East Asian Languages and Literature, Political Science, and History departments have shown some interest, but many of them are still working out how they want to use it.”
Linda Lorimer, the University’s vice president for global and strategic initiatives, is also confident that the space will eventually become of greater use to the undergraduate population.
“The center has been built to have study carrels for students doing research in Beijing, and they will be available for undergraduates as well as graduate students,” Lorimer said. “Undergraduate admissions intends to use the center for its work—so prospective undergraduates [from the area] may find themselves there.” Lorimer also described the center as a potential hub and gathering space for the more than one hundred undergraduates who study Chinese in the summer in Beijing through Yale’s Light Fellowship, as well as those participating in summer internships.
The potential research and cultural exchange resources that could be provided by the Center would seem to align with Yale’s mission as a leading university. However, some members of the Yale community see Yale Beijing’s opening as more than simply expansion of Yale’s educational tools.
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As Yale continues to deepen its academic connections in China, some have expressed concern that Yale is falling short in exporting its values in international ventures. It is a problem faced by many American universities: a recent conflict broke out between Peking University and Wellesley College, which have formed an academic partnership with each other similar to that of Yale-NUS. In October 2013, Peking University Professor Xia Yeliang was dismissed for expressing pro-democratic views, and in response, 130 members of Wellesley’s faculty signed an open letter decrying Peking University’s decision. The partnership between both schools nevertheless remained intact.
Yale’s relationship with the National University of Singapore, which required collaboration with the Singaporean government, similarly proved controversial. In the spring of 2012, members of the Yale faculty discussed issues concerning civil rights and freedoms in Singapore. In April 2013, Yale’s Arts and Sciences faculty passed a resolution expressing their “concern regarding the history of lack of respect for civil and political rights in the state of Singapore.”
James Sleeper, professor of political science, believes that with China, Yale once again faces challenges in navigating its international relationships. He noted, however, that the dangers for Yale are less overt that they have been with Wellesley. Rather than directly opposing the existing in stitutions in the countries of expansion, Yale’s system of education abroad may prove too complicit with the coercive laws of these nations, he explained.
“What we should fear most is not open conflicts over academic freedom, like Wellesley’s conflicts with Beijing,” Sleeper said, “but an all-too-smooth convergence of both Yale and its Chinese hosts toward authoritarian, state-and-corporate-run academic programs.” A possible effect of such a convergence is limitations on freedom of expression. He said professors and students forced to study under the restrictions imposed by the government could even preemptively censor themselves before receiving threats or punishments. Rather than a liberal education fostering intellectual independence to challenge existing restrictions, it could be a new means of subtlety reinforcing them, Sleeper posited.
This arrangement, Sleeper believes, could prove more toxic, for he believes that Yale’s academic exchanges are empowering the authoritarians in these regimes. “We don’t need more ‘creative’ authoritarians—we need more independent citizens, here and in Asia,” he continued. “But regimes like China’s and Singapore’s are welcoming and funding Western liberal educators who are willing to make too many compromises without saying so.”
Lorimer, however, believes that the Center is nothing more than an “extension of the significant and long-standing work of Yale faculty in China,” she said. She mentioned the Yale Law School’s Center on the Peking University campus that has existed for over a decade, Yale’s large research center on Fudan University’s campus, and the School of Public Health’s establishment of a Center for Biostatistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University earlier this year.
Filer reiterated Lorimer’s views in defense of the center. “Our relationship with people and institutions in China has been changing over time, but this isn’t our first foray into China,” he said. “This is a continuation of a near-200-year relationship. Yale has the longest history of any western institution with China. We already have these tremendous relationships with colleges there. The center is simply responding to the potential to do more things for all the people at Yale.”
Notwithstanding, the center demonstrates that Yale now has a physical presence in Beijing. Lorimer and Filer have both stated that there are no plans to create a Beijing counterpart to Yale-NUS, but it is evident that the center is Yale’s attempt to create a presence in a political and economic giant. “Clearly, it’s an attempt by Yale to keep a foot in what, after all, will be the world’s most important nation-state in our lifetime,” Sleeper said. “But, equally clearly, Yale is going to try to learn from the mistakes it made in becoming too deeply and inextricably involved in a joint venture with the regime in Singapore.
The center’s opening is an opportunity for Yale to demonstrate its efficacy beyond New Haven. Indeed, it is forward-looking of Yale to expand its real-estate in what is regarded to be a rising superpower. But the center perhaps remains in danger of allowing its environment, which does not adhere to the same standards of academic freedom, to dictate its direction. Resting on the shoulders of a legacy initiated by Peter Parker and Yung Wing over 100 years ago, the center should be cautious to allow the core mission of Yale to guide its progress as it navigates this complex yet invaluable international relationship.
–Graphic by Alex Swanson