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President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

purdueexponent.org

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Re: President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

#641

Post by jbkiv »

This a weak response.

It reminds me of a fellow student at Wharton. Whatever the question was in classes (ethics, economics) his answer was ALWAYS "I really feel strongly both ways". My friends and I even gave him a price for his answers/behavior at the end.

Years later he was a CEO of major corporations. That served him well to never take the stand.

Life is full of people who "really feel strongly both ways". It seems that Purdue is taking that route. We have seen that with other Universities: cheating on exams? Don't do that again (=we need to keep the money flowing).

This is awful. President Daniels should resign. Or the Board should advise him to step down "in the interest of the University".

Re: President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

#642

Post by wbsss4412 »

lazide wrote: post #539
simonh wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like some of the students not only threatened to report him to the Chinese authorities, but told him that they had done so, and he has proof who made these threats and claims. They didn’t try to hide it.

If they have a right to do that, is that harassment? I doubt Purdue (up to now) has any policy saying it’s illegal to report someone to authorities for something they did. Even if those authorities are not popular right now and the thing they did is ok at Perdue but not at home. Is it a ‘dick move’ and offend our sensibilities? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s any different than if a bunch of folks from the US were a…

> But that doesn’t mean it’s any different than if a bunch of folks from the US were at a French university during the 50’s and someone called the FBI telling them that Bob was saying a lot of scary things about communism and just got a Russian Girlfriend and maybe they should look into it.

I’m sorry, but is this supposed to be a counter point? This kind of behavior would have been ridiculous and unacceptable as well, unless said US citizen had access to state secrets or something of that nature.

Re: President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

#643

Post by splitstud »

rendall wrote: post #338
throwaway894345 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you have to know something about the law to know when it does/doesn’t apply, and this student newspaper apparently decided it didn’t care to invest that kind of time. I think this is understandable for those of us who don’t prefer to study other countries’ laws. Perhaps EU subjects should seek to improve their laws.

Nah. Speaking as an American ex-pat, it's about Americans being offended that foreign laws have heft and import. It pierces the sovereignty bubble. The Internet is home-grown. How dare other nations dictate to us Americans how we run our sites, amirite? We're gonna take our toys and home.

No its literally about avoiding the morass of legal compliance as best you can, whenever and wherever.

Re: President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

#644

Post by [deleted] »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #292
jmull wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The letter is from the president of Purdue, while the web site is a news site that is independent of the university. Also, it’s not really censorship — they have to deal with the GDPR headache, one way or the other, just like everyone else. Simply blocking the EU is a blunt but simple and effective way of doing so, and makes decent sense for a site where the interest is 99% local.

> they have to deal with the GDPR headache What headache? A sensible solution: when EU visitor is detected, don't set cookies. Purdue solution: when EU visitor is detected, block them.

[deleted]

Re: President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

#646

Post by allemagne »

oxymoran wrote: post #45

The brainwashing must be strong for students thousands of miles away from China in the middle of nowhere Indiana for them to feel the need to snitch on dissenters. Or, more likely, they were threatened before they left China that they would be watched while abroad.

The narrative of Chinese international students being brainwashed CCP militants or terrified informants is miles away from every interaction I've actually had with Chinese international students. Even when 'sensitive topics' are brought up.

I think there are some bad trends and some very vocal and nationalistic exceptions that make for some sensational news stories. Like most college students, everyone is mostly just concerned with homework and getting along with their roommates.

Re: President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

#647

Post by a_square_peg »

He needed to make this about harassment, not China. If the first paragraph was corrected to leave these parts out, I think it would be a much clearer case:

From:

> Purdue learned from a national news account last week that one of our students, after speaking out on behalf of freedom and others martyred for advocating it, was harassed and threatened by other students from his own home country. Worse still, his family back home, in this case China, was visited and threatened by agents of that nation’s secret police.

To:

> Purdue learned from a national news account last week that one of our students, after speaking out on behalf of freedom and others martyred for advocating it, was harassed and threatened by other students. Worse still, his family back home was visited and threatened by agents of that nation’s secret police.

Re: President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

#649

Post by tshaddox »

Nevermark wrote: post #582
tshaddox wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very similar thing happens with “democracy.” In America it’s basically just anything that calls itself democracy and vaguely follows some notion of Western democracy is just accepted as the obvious best way to organize society. You’ll get a lot of head scratching if you ask questions like “What if it turns out that the correlation between government policies and the policy preferences of the population is stronger…

If by 'undemocratic' you mean autocratic, it isn't proponents of democracy that are stripping them of agency. It is their form of government. However, understanding the pro's and con's of any type of government, including autocracies, is a worthy pursuit. We can learn something from anyone.

> If by 'undemocratic' you mean autocratic, it isn't proponents of democracy that are stripping them of agency. It is their form of government.

But you would need to show that they are actually being stripped of their agency. You can't just say "I declare that their government doesn't represent their preferences, and when they say that the government actually does represent their preferences, that's because they can't think for themselves." Having different preferences than you is not sufficient evidence of brainwashing. That's pretty circular, and you could just as easily say "Western democracy is bad, and anyone who lives in a Western democracy who says they like it is just brainwashed."

Re: President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment

#650

Post by dang »

Msw242 wrote: post #19

Please report any suspected collaborators with the Chinese secret police to the DEI campus safety board. All suspects will need to report to the DEI offices for re-education. Joking, but they literally do the exact same shit to Republicans.

Please don't take HN threads on partisan flamewar tangents. That's an extremely low quality direction even for flamewars to take.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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