Wrongdoing by American Mormons in China

The Mormon Church, also known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. Its membership is growing at an extraordinary rate (see table), and it is active in many parts of the world.

The Church runs a "China Teachers Program" through Brigham Young University (BYU), in Provo, Utah. BYU is owned by the Church. Since 1989, according to its website, the program has sent over 400 Mormons to Chinese universities, where they work as English teachers.

Lin and Susan Bothwell (a husband and wife couple) are two of the program's participants. They taught at Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious universities, during the 2001-2 academic year. While there, they behaved dishonestly and violated the principles of free speech and academic freedom. BYU leaders, informed of the violations, supported the Bothwells.

I was a colleague of the Bothwells at Tsinghua. I delivered a public lecture highlighting problems in American society, particularly the pernicious cultural effects of electronic media. The lecture echoed criticisms made by a wide range of commentators in the U.S. itself, from congressmen to all the major medical associations to renowned academic researchers.

I delivered the lecture not only at Tsinghua but also at several other leading universities, including Beijing University and the China University of Political Science and Law. Audiences received it with interest and enthusiasm.

But the Bothwells were angry that America was being criticized. Their reaction, ironically, was to combat the ideas by violating the core American principle of free speech. They secretly complained to our superiors in the Tsinghua administration and influenced them to cancel my subsequent public lectures for the remainder of the academic year.

I was unaware of the complaint. I emailed the Bothwells shortly after the lecture because they had left abruptly at the end, apparently displeased. I told them I would be happy to discuss any objections they had. Lin Bothwell's reply stated:

I am puzzled. I have expressed no displeasure to you or spoken about this publicly to anyone. I don't know what your comment [about our being displeased] refers to.

Lin wrote these words after he and Susan had already complained to the administration.

I only learned of the Bothwells' complaint from my boss some weeks later. When I did, I arranged a meeting with the Bothwells to discuss it. They defended their complaint on the basis that their contract forbade "political activity". They insisted to me that my comments about the U.S. constituted "political activity" -- and that their participation at my lecture also constituted "political activity", which they were obliged to report. (I have given the lecture half a dozen times before large audiences at various Chinese universities. I have never heard such a suggestion from anyone but the Bothwells. The standard contract for foreign teachers in China makes no reference to political activity generally; it requires only that one not "interfere in China's internal affairs.")

Lin explained his "I am puzzled" message to me by saying that by the time he'd written it, he no longer felt there was a problem, because the administration had assured them I would be giving no more public lectures.

In the same message to me, Lin had also offered some insincere remarks about the cancellation of my lectures:

It was my understanding that the changes [in the lecture schedule] were something the administration wanted to do, and that Susan simply made changes in the schedule that they suggested, revised the schedule and put notices in everyone's mailbox. I received mine by mail like everyone else.

Anyway, that is what I know about the situation. I hope this information is helpful. I trust we will all work together for the benefit of the students of Tsinghua.

In our meeting, I made a modest request of the Bothwells: that they write to the administration to say they had no objection to my having given the lecture, even if its views differed from theirs. When they had still not done so after two months, I wrote to BYU leaders, fully expecting that an American university would repudiate obvious violations of academic freedom by its representatives abroad.

But BYU, while claiming a policy of honesty, opted to support the Bothwells rather than admit wrongdoing. I received the following response from George and Diane Pace, the people in charge of the BYU program:

We have been in contact with the Bothwells and forwarded your letter to them. We have asked them to resolve this situation honestly and in a straight forward manner which is always the policy of Brigham Young University and the China Teachers Program.

Despite this, the Bothwells did nothing whatsoever to resolve the situation. A week later the Paces wrote again:

We have been in contact with the Bothwells concerning your complaint and we have the greatest confidence in their ability, professionally, to take care of this matter.

Just after this email was sent, I was summoned for two extraordinary, one-hour meetings with my boss and his boss, the department chairman. Both urged me -- repeatedly and emphatically-- to cease all communications about the issue, either with BYU or anyone else.

In the two semesters that I worked as an English teacher in the department, these were the only substantial meetings I ever had with either of these two gentlemen. Why would the department chairman spend two hours of his time to silence my complaint to BYU, made in my private time? I posed this question to him several times. He answered that he was afraid BYU would conclude from my complaint that the department was dissatisfied with the Bothwells' performance.

I asked them if they had been contacted by BYU. My boss at first denied it, then acknowledged that BYU had indeed communicated with the department about me.

Still another email arrived from the Paces immediately after the meetings:

At this point we aren't certain what it is you want from us considering our vote of confidence in the Bothwells ability to take care of the matter.

I replied to inform them of the meetings and added:

It is certainly difficult for anyone hearing about this matter not to conclude that this is what you meant by "honest and straightforward resolution."

But let me be explicit, to ensure all of you are thoroughly informed about the situation here. No one at BYU has offered a substantive response to my reports of ethical breaches. And in addition, I have heard no word whatever from the Bothwells.

I also sent a copy of this message to more senior BYU officials -- Jeff Ringer, Donald Holsinger, and BYU President Merrill Bateman. No one replied.

No intellectual objection to my lecture has ever been suggested; no claim of impropriety was ever made; and the lecture's comments on America, which were largely drawn from respected American sources, caused no offense among my other American colleagues. The Bothwells simply didn't like the ideas expressed. The way my boss relayed their complaint to me was to say the lecture had made them "unhappy."

BYU has already been the focus of criticism for academic freedom violations in the U.S. A report on BYU by the American Association of University Professors describes its "distressingly poor" climate for academic freedom, and BYU is among the 51 universities that are currently (as of June, 2002) on the Association's censure list for unresolved violations of academic freedom.

I wrote to the Association about this matter. Their reply stated that it would be pointless for them to approach BYU because the BYU administration, "at least under President Bateman's tenure, simply does not pay us any heed."

It is not very clear how BYU and the Bothwells have been able to exert such influence at Tsinghua, but it is remarkable that Chinese university administrators would feel impelled to try to stop a teacher from expressing well-founded criticisms of the U.S. that have a direct bearing on today's China, or from writing to BYU in his personal capacity and his private time about ethical breaches.

The BYU China Teachers Program website notes that the program provides "important educational services to our affiliated Chinese universities." From a financial standpoint, BYU and the Mormon Church are certainly in a position to provide very substantial support to the Chinese universities it chooses to partner with. Time Magazine has described the Church's "extraordinary financial vibrancy":

Its current assets total a minimum of $30 billion. If it were a corporation, its estimated $5.9 billion in annual gross income would place it midway through the FORTUNE 500, a little below Union Carbide and the Paine Webber Group but bigger than Nike and the Gap.

The Church's wealth comes from the "tithe" that it imposes on members -- a compulsory contribution of 10% of each Mormon's income. Time reports that in 1996, "$5.2 billion in tithes flowed into Salt Lake City, $4.9 billion of which came from American Mormons."

The Church is clearly very interested in continuing the outstanding growth it has achieved outside the U.S. One reason for its phenomenal rate of increase is its missionary work. According to the New Yorker magazine,

all young Mormon men are encouraged to give two years of their lives to the mission fields.... More than half the missionaries are sent abroad, and 50 languages are taught at the [Church's Missionary Training Center]. When they arrive at their destination, they are expected to spend six days a week knocking on doors and presenting prepared lectures on [Church founder] Joseph Smith and the Mormon message. [In the year 2000], 60,000 missionaries signed up 274,000 converts worldwide.

Time reports that

the Mormon Church is by far the most numerically successful creed born on American soil and one of the fastest growing anywhere. Its U.S. membership of 4.8 million is the seventh largest in the country, while its hefty 4.7% annual American growth rate is nearly doubled abroad, where there are already 4.9 million adherents. Gordon B. Hinckley, the church's President--and its current Prophet--is engaged in massive foreign construction, spending billions to erect 350 church-size meetinghouses a year and adding 15 cathedral-size temples to the existing 50....

[Hinckley] is in the process of a grand expansion, the organizational follow-up to the massive missionary work the church has long engaged in overseas. To gather the necessary capital for it, Hinckley has decelerated the growth of Mormon domestic investments: although still on the increase, their pace is far below that of previous decades, and the church has extracted itself from such previously Mormon-heavy fields as banking, hospitals, private schools and sugar. The church authorities have removed the tithe from the authority of local administrators and pulled every penny of it back to Salt Lake City for delegation by a more select and internationally minded group of managers.

Direct missionary activity is not feasible in China, since the government would not allow it. But BYU's China Teachers Program gives the Mormon Church a presence in the nation's top universities.

The program's website professes the goal of "building a relationship of trust" for the Mormon Church in China. However, the values reflected by the program's activities at Tsinghua could well inspire concern and suspicion in people of good will in many quarters: faithful Mormons who expect honesty from their leaders; Americans who would resent acts by a powerful American institution that create the impression of hypocrisy in America's promotion of freedom; and patriotic Chinese who care about the integrity and independence of their nation's leading universities.

Tsinghua University happens to be the very site where President Bush urged the values of freedom upon the Chinese people, during his visit to China in February, 2002. In the speech he delivered at Tsinghua, the President stated:

Life in America shows that liberty, paired with law, is not to be feared. In a free society, diversity is not disorder. Debate is not strife. And dissent is not revolution. A free society trusts its citizens to seek greatness in themselves and their country.

These admirable sentiments were expressed almost simultaneously with the email message I received from BYU leaders expressing their policy of honesty and straightforwardness.

I hope President Bush's ideas may yet inspire Americans in China at least as much as the Chinese.

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