The organization of arbitration for foreign experts affairs
State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs
Beijing, CHINA

I signed a teaching contract with the Foreign Affairs College (FAC) of Beijing last May. The contract committed both parties for the period from September, 2002 to July, 2003. In November, 2002, FAC broke our contract by terminating my employment without justification.

Paragraph 8 of the contract specifies a Breach Penalty of between US $500 and $2,000, but FAC has refused to pay even as much as $500. I have written to FAC several times urging a settlement of $1250, saying I would accept this amount as complete fulfillment of its obligations under our contract.

I also pointed out in my letters to FAC that paragraph 11 of our contract promises that I may request arbitration by the State Bureau of Foreign Experts Affairs, and that I would request arbitration if we could not resolve our difference directly.

Ms. Li Jing of the Foreign Affairs Office has confirmed (by phone) that my written settlement proposal was received. However, FAC has not responded. I am therefore requesting arbitration as I informed FAC I would do.

In light of the circumstances described in this document, I believe it would be appropriate to require FAC to pay a penalty of US $2000 for its contract breach.

If FAC had a justification for terminating my employment, it should have explained its justification to me in writing. This is elementary. FAC has never done so.

FAC's letters to me complain about "student dissatisfaction." This is not an adequate basis for terminating a teacher. A university must INVESTIGATE complaints about a teacher and determine whether they are valid. FAC neglected this very basic duty.

Students in certain of the classes I was teaching did indeed sign letters of complaint about me that were submitted to the administration. But the complaints were based on false rumors and gossip. For example, students believed when they signed the letters that I had taken one of their classmates, Ms. Lue Yangqiao, alone to a park late at night, and in some way behaved improperly with her.

This story makes a low appeal to prejudices that some Chinese people have about Westerners. But the story is false. FAC could easily have determined that the story is false if they had INVESTIGATED. But they never did so. They accepted the students' complaints about my "improper behavior" uncritically.

I am a responsible and dedicated teacher. Many students at FAC have expressed this view to me and to members of the FAC administration. I also taught successfully at Tsinghua University throughout the 2001-2 academic year. Why then did so many students at FAC sign complaints about me?

The answer is that at FAC, around November 1, an emotional campaign suddenly flared among students in certain of my classes. In this campaign, students were given false information and were pressured by other students to sign complaint letters. During this time someone, apparently an FAC student, sent a written death threat to me through the mail (more on this below).

I had an open class discussion with students on November 11 in which they acknowledged that students were pressured to sign complaints. I also spoke privately to students who told me they had been pressured to sign the complaints. Some apologized for signing; others expressed regret.

Several of the same students who signed the letters had, only days earlier, sent email messages to me praising my teaching. Here are three examples:

STUDENT #1: "I think your class is very chanllenging for us, and we have to be always alert, and smart in your class, but I think that is OK, and we could learn a lot in your class."

STUDENT #2: "I like the materials you gave us ,I like the way of your analysis to these materials, and i like these topices ,because those make me learn more about other culture."

STUDENT #3: "I think I can learn a lot of interesting things in your class. Your lesson is very good and your explain to the article is logical. I enjoy it very much."

The students are young and inexperienced, and they lack the courage to resist when fellow students pressure them to do something they know is wrong. Unfortunately, the FAC administration welcomed their false complaints and encouraged hysteria and impetuous action. This lesson from FAC is not only bad for students; it is also harmful to the nation they will serve in future as professionals in government, law and business.

I wrote several letters to FAC responding in detail to the complaints I heard about. (I have never been given the opportunity to read or obtain a copy of the complaints that were written about me.) FAC never responded to my letters or even acknowledged them.

On December 20 I emailed an earlier draft of this document to invite my former FAC students to comment. (I have 144 email addresses of my former students.) I have received only positive, supportive responses from the students.

FAC's decision to terminate my employment was guided not only by unfounded student complaints, but also by anonymous email messages it received from a psychologically disturbed man in Tianjin who developed a grudge against me months before I began teaching at FAC. Since June, 2002, this man has been making phone calls and sending malicious email messages about me to the presidents' offices and Foreign Affairs Offices of both Tsinghua and FAC. His messages are anonymous, his allegations unsupported and untrue. Nevertheless, FAC gave him its attention and allowed itself to be influenced by him.

I was informed of my termination in a meeting on November 18. In that meeting, FAC described the problems from its point of view. The first problem cited by FAC was the anonymous phone calls and email messages received from this man since the beginning of the semester.

It is truly an enormous error for any responsible institution to allow itself to be influenced by anonymous and obviously malicious messages.

November 18 was the first time anyone informed me of the messages that this man had been sending since June, 2002. (On November 27 I personally visited the Tsinghua Foreign Affairs Office to discuss this. I was informed by Ms. Li Hongyu of that office that the man had sent "many messages" to various people at Tsinghua, including the office of the president.)

In addition to violating its contract with me, FAC cheated me out of a petty sum of money when I moved out of my apartment on the FAC campus. When FAC terminated my employment on November 18, it demanded that I vacate my apartment within 12 days. On November 29, just before my move, I proposed to FAC that it keep four pictures I had hung on the walls of my apartment and that it reimburse me the 200 RMB I had paid for them. FAC agreed, and I left the pictures on the walls when I moved out (rather than removing them with my other belongings). After my move, however, FAC refused to honor the agreement and reimburse the 200 RMB.

The most extraordinary breach of responsibility by FAC occurred when I received a written DEATH THREAT, apparently sent by an FAC student at the same time students were signing complaint letters. The threat letter said: "You can't imagine how we hate you. If you don't stop attacking on China and harassing the girls, you will be taught a good lesson. It is easier to kill you than to kill a dog."

The charges that I had been "attacking" China and "harassing girls" were also made in the students' complaint letters to FAC.

I immediately gave the letter to the Foreign Affairs Office, requesting that they contact Beijing police and treat the matter seriously. I also wrote a letter to FAC requesting that the threat be investigated, and that I be assured of my physical safety at FAC.

These requests were utterly ignored by FAC. There was no response at all. As far as I know, the threat against me was never investigated, either by FAC or by police. And no one from FAC ever assured me that I was safe. No one told me that anything would be done to protect my safety. One member of the administration told me at one point that the threat was "not our business."

The death threat was among the items discussed when I met with FAC on November 18. FAC emphasized to me that the threat contained two specific demands. The clear implication was that in order to ensure my safety, I should abide by the demands. It seems, astonishingly, that the administration of FAC was supporting the assumptions and goals of the author of the death threat.

There is cause for embarrassment for China when a foreign teacher receives a death threat at one of its more prominent universities, particularly a school of diplomacy. But the negligent response to the threat by FAC authorities is nothing less than shameful. It is to be hoped that China will be better represented in future by FAC's graduates than it has been by the FAC administration.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO ARBITRATOR: Many untrue allegations about me have been made at FAC. I request the opportunity to read and respond to any allegations communicated to the arbitrator before a decision is made. I am easy to reach (via email to uw@urielw.com), and a telephone appointment can be arranged if desired.