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Criticising China’s Covid Lockdowns is ‘Microaggression’, University Tells Staff

by Will Jones
28 April 2023 11:34 AM

Criticising China’s Covid lockdowns is a “microaggression”, a university has told professors. The Telegraph has the story.

The University of Surrey’s mandatory online module for staff, titled ‘introduction to race equity’, includes several examples of so-called microaggressions, or subtle remarks or actions that some find offensive.

Academics are told that they should not critique the Communist Party’s zero-Covid draconian lockdown measures, which have seen millions locked in their homes, as Chinese students may feel they are simply “caring more about others”.

Students are encouraged to anonymously report such perceived slights on a “Report + Support” webpage and scholars are urged “to seek advice from human resources regarding next steps” if they are reported…

The Telegraph can reveal that bosses at the university, based in Guildford, are facing a revolt from more than a dozen of their own academics who accuse them of “policing conformity with controversial moral and/or political beliefs” of what they say, and even the readings they assign to students.

The row centres on the provost, Tim Dunne, seeking to “morally evaluate academics” with a new appraisal criteria that requires managers to mark them on their pursuit of “fairer outcomes”, demonstrate “inclusive educational practice” and “actively champion initiatives to promote diversity and fairness in our community”.

Thirteen academics are trying to defeat the new marking criteria at a vote of the university’s senate on Thursday night, claiming it “would create significant new legal and institutional risks for the university”.

In a letter to the senate, the rebels cite how they may be “deemed non-inclusive” for committing the “prohibited microaggression [of] criticism of the Chinese Government’s Covid policies”.

The academics warn: “An academic who believes any of these things, or who criticises Chinese Government policies, will soon be able to complain to regulators under the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill on grounds that the university is failing to meet its positive legal duty to ‘take steps to secure freedom of speech’.”

They added: “Worse, this video gives academics a reason to fear that such criticism could result in their being subjected to disciplinary action under the university’s new ‘zero tolerance’ approach to microaggressions.”

They also fear they could be punished for not making student marks “more equal”, due to there being no consensus on what constitutes “fair outcomes”, and may be marked down for not endorsing the university’s guidance on decolonising curricula to ensure it does not “reflect a western-dominated view”.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Academic FreedomChinaFree SpeechMicro-aggressionsUniversityWoke Gobbledegook

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11 Comments
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago

“They also fear they could be punished for not making student marks “more equal”, due to there being no consensus on what constitutes “fair outcomes”, and may be marked down for not endorsing the university’s guidance on decolonising curricula to ensure it does not “reflect a western-dominated view”.”

I’m sure Chinese universities are very worried about making sure their curricula don’t reflect a Chinese-dominated view.

53
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Chinese universities don’t seek to make money by (competing for) attracting overseas students whose sensitivities must be pandered to. English universities are businesses with a global clientele who happen to be located in England. To use Theresa May’s phrase once again (it’s really quite apt), they’re not really English universities, they’re academic institutions of nowhere.

33
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  RW

Yes, good point.

6
0
Sontol
Sontol
2 years ago

“Academics are told that they should not critique the Communist Party’s zero-Covid draconian lockdown measures, which have seen millions locked in their homes, as Chinese students may feel they are simply “caring more about others”.”

= Academics at the University of Surrey have been told that, in company with the 820 Chinese students attending the institution, they are now under the absolute ideological control of the Beijing-based CCP, and to mind their manners as such. Or else.

Last edited 2 years ago by Sontol
67
0
NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
2 years ago

And how much of its funding comes from China, he asks …

36
0
DHJ
DHJ
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

Whether right or wrong, concerns over the preferential treatment of students from China due to the income derived from them could be heard many years ago.

What’s different now is the way the Comrades at Surrey are leveraging this to help usher in a different regime here.

29
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

Tim Dunne clearly in receipt of Chinese brown envelopes.

25
0
RW
RW
2 years ago

Considering that the CCP kept people locked or welded into their flats until they started hunger revolts out of desparation, it seems exceedingly unlikely that someone from China could believe this was a measure of kindness. Only the warped mind of western psychopath with zero concern for his fellow human beings could come up with such an explanation for a policy he wants to be implented for his own perceived benefit regardless of the cost to others, up to and including those other starving to death.

Here’s a message for you, Mr or Mrs Race Equity Psychopath: People from China certainly look somewhat different from us but they’re not strange animals, they’re people just like we are. If anything, they’re culturally more inclined to socialise than westerners because they’re accustomed to (in the cities) much larger population densities and sometimes feel lonely and miserable in European cities just because everyone’s so alone there (that’s from an Indonesian girl I once knew but wrt the number of people around she was used to, the situation is comparable). They’re – lightly put – not going to appreciate being forced into isolation for some abstract benefit. They might look all the same to you, but they’re not strange robots, they feel just like we do.

[Coming to think of it, could the race equity psychopath perhaps have a not so well hidden racism problem?]

19
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  RW

“Coming to think of it, could the race equity psychopath perhaps have a not so well hidden racism problem?”

I think you are absolutely right. They are more racist than most people.

11
0
Dr G
Dr G
2 years ago

If criticising the CCO’s lockdown policy is a “microaggression”, why isn’t forcing an experimental genetic engineering transfection agent on the world a macro aggression or assault?

22
0
GMO
GMO
2 years ago

Free speech is gradually being curtailed.

0
0

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