Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, Oct. 23: The Harvard College Administrative Board has placed three undergraduate students on disciplinary probation following their protest against the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, during his April address at the Harvard Kennedy School. However, no disciplinary action was taken against a Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) student, believed to have ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who forcibly removed a female Taiwanese protestor from the venue.
The decision to discipline the protesters, revealed by the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on October 18, has sparked outrage. The committee criticised Harvard for reprimanding the student activists—Costte Wu and Yangchen Tsering—while failing to act against the HGSE student involved in the altercation. The Select Committee condemned the university’s response as biased, calling it an alarming example of CCP influence on U.S. higher education.
“This is yet another example of Harvard’s appallingly unequal treatment of protestors based on the speech they support,” said Rep. R. Moolenaar (R-Mich), who chairs the Select Committee on the CCP. “Harvard is punishing brave students who spoke out against the CCP’s human rights abuses while not only letting the student who assaulted them off scot-free but also handing him an apology. The American higher education system needs to wake up to the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on our nation’s campuses and protect students who speak out against the CCP, not punish them for standing up to bullies.”
“Once again, Harvard has proven to be completely corrupted by adversarial foreign influence. Harvard is kowtowing to Communist China and as a senior member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, I will continue working to root out foreign control over our college campuses. We cannot allow American institutions of higher education to serve as tools for Communist China to carry out its transnational repression. I look forward to working with Chairman Moolenaar and Chairwoman Foxx to hold Harvard accountable and to end Communist China’s infiltration of American universities,” remarked Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.
The university spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the investigation, stating that the university “does not comment on individual disciplinary proceedings or cases.”
The protest occurred on April 20, 2024, during Ambassador Xie Feng’s speech at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, part of the two-day Greater China Conference organized by the Kennedy School’s Greater China Society. Harvard students Cosette Wu and Tsering Yangchen interrupted the speech, shouting slogans condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) policies and human rights abuses in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Both students were removed from the event shortly after their protest.
