Open Letter to Law and F. A. Deans

Dear Deans Jiang Guo Qing and Zhou Qi Peng:

I write to respond to the letters of complaint that my students have recently submitted to you. I would like to thank you for promptly arranging to have the letters brought to my attention.

I believe this public response is appropriate because the students' complaints are essentially public -- they are known to all my Law and Foreign Affairs students, since virtually all of them signed the complaints. Regrettably, however, there is one concerned individual who has not yet been given the opportunity to read the letters: myself.

I have however spoken to students about them, both in my classes and privately, and it is clear the criticisms are riddled with misconceptions and errors of fact. A public response is therefore also a necessary corrective for students who have allowed themselves to be manipulated by certain of their peers.

It has been put to me by a FAC representative that the unanimity of the students is in itself proof that there must be merit in their position. How could they all be wrong? Let me begin by pointing out that this viewpoint is based on a misunderstanding of the student culture at FAC. The students' unanimity is an illusion. Students have privately informed me that other students would resent or even hate an individual student who refused to sign the letters. One student apologized to me for signing, saying he had no choice. Another told me that although he was not well informed about the complaints, boys were obliged to sign the complaints to show "support" for the girls who complained.

I raised this point about the social pressure to sign the complaints in my 2001122 (Foreign Affairs) class today. The students acknowledged (reluctantly) that the pressure indeed existed.

Considering that this is a school of diplomacy, it is odd that students have resorted to an attack of this kind without making any prior attempt to discuss concerns with me. Indeed, it came as a considerable surprise when I learned of the existence of these letters from the administration last week. (This was also the only time my performance had ever been criticized by the administration.) The indications I'd received until then had been that the students -- at least in three of the four classes concerned -- were quite pleased with my teaching.

This preference for attack as a first option is perhaps most evident in the case of one of my International Law classes (2000412). When one student wrote me a private note saying that several students were displeased, I emailed all the students in the class (without identifying her) to inquire whether there was a problem. I also expressed my readiness to make changes according to their preferences:

Students, one of your classmates informs me that "quite a lot of students" in your class are unhappy with my teaching. Is this true? I was under the impression that you are quite pleased with my class. Please discuss amongst yourselves and let's talk in class about any changes you would like.

The facetious subject line I gave for the above email message was, "Hate my teaching?" I understand that this has been cited in complaint letters as evidence of a problem in my teaching (although, again, I have not seen the letters).

The only student to email a response stated:

We don't hate your class since you are a very responsible and careful teacher. And we do learn much from your class. You don't need to worry about this. You are a good teacher really.

What the problem is that you, a foreign teacher and us, Chinese students sometimes think in different ways because of our culture background, our education background and so on. Maybe we don't like some of your way of doing things and dealing with others.

For example, you sometimes focus on very little details and spend much class time on it. This shows you're meticulous. Unfortunately, we don't think it is so necessary. This is a problem of intrinsic understanding, not because we 'hate' your class.

In the next class (Oct. 23) I raised their satisfaction with the course as a discussion topic. Some students did offer some objections, but they seemed ill-founded. I followed this up on Oct. 25 with another email to all the students in the class, excerpted here:

I'm interested in genuine proposals on how to improve the class, but none of your suggestions in our Oct. 23 discussion seemed to make much sense (except that I should talk more slowly).

You said I ask questions that cannot be answered based on the knowledge you have. It is strange that none of you could produce a single example. I ask many questions. If the criticism were well-founded, one would think you could think of at least one example.

Somebody said I should present background before you read material. I find I am simply unable to agree. I have just carefully reviewed "Federal Agency Accuses City of Illegally Ignoring Harassment," the article we'd been discussing at the time of our discussion. There is practically NOTHING there you would be unable to understand because of missing background knowledge. There are a few references -- NOW, "supposedly law-enforcement Mayor" -- that you might not appreciate, but that would hardly detract from a thorough understanding of all the main points.

If you have any other comments I'd be glad to discuss them, either via email or in class. Of course it should be clear I'm not the type to abuse my grading power by punishing critics. (And I take pains to explain my grading scheme; you should be able to verify the objectivity of the scores I give you.) Feel free to express yourself ....

Again, my subject line was "Hate my class?" This time three students responded, all with praise, excerpted here:

Student #1

None of us, at least as far as I know, have said that we hate your class. Maybe some of us feel nervous in your class, but we never hate it. I think it 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

To be truth , 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 must announce that I don't hate your class, because I think I can learn a lot of interesting things in it. Your lesson is very good and your explain to the article is logical. I enjoy it very much.

These emails were written by the students between October 28 and 30. None of the responses offered any substantive criticisms (other than the comment that I sometimes speak too fast). Yet, somehow, all the students in this class launched their "attack" very shortly afterwards -- without having made any serious attempt to communicate about the problems they perceived.

It is one of the many ironies of this affair that, apparently, the phrase "abuse of grading power" in my own message above was appropriated for use as a supplementary complaint about me. It is remarkable how very carefree the students are in making false charges about a teacher. It seems that the students feel that as long as they act together as a group, they can do whatever they wish without needing to be concerned for the consequences.

I am in fact quite conscientious about my "grading power," and I make some efforts to make it plain to the students that my grading of tests is objective. The email message where they learned the "abuse of grading power" phrase explains how they can see for themselves that I do not abuse my grading power. Yet the students apparently feel at liberty to irresponsibly accuse me of abusing this "power."

But abuse of grading power is only a footnote in the long list of charges I am obliged to answer. "Abuse of grading power" would not suffice to generate the hysteria and genuine emotion that have seized my students. It would not enable Li Ming, one of my Foreign Affairs students, to feel confident in the support of his classmates as he strode out of my classroom today, shouting at me to "Fuck off!" Just as all the students had sheepishly and uniformly signed the complaint letters, today they all followed Li Ming and abandoned my class in unison.

This is a class of students who are scheduled to receive a second degree in Foreign Affairs about 8 months from now. Some will go on to work for China's Foreign Ministry.

The natural culmination of the hooliganism exemplified by Li Ming's behavior would be a death threat. Indeed, that is precisely what I received today, in a hand-addressed envelope delivered to me via the Foreign Affairs Office. (The Foreign Affairs Office is notifying the Beijing police, at my request. More on this below.)

There is an obvious stratagem for malicious students wishing to generate hysteria about a male teacher from the West: to suggest improprieties and harassment of female students. This predictable course has indeed been pursued. Numerous unfounded charges along these lines have been made. The International Law students were utterly convinced, for example, that I had taken one of their female classmates alone to a park late one night, which sounds very sinister. When I denied that this had ever happened, one girl asked me skeptically: "Do you think she would lie about something like this?"

This particular conversation again strikingly illustrates how indifferent some of the students are to the possibility that accusations they make about a teacher are baseless. The girl was adamant about the park story and clearly did not believe me. I told the girl to check with her friend -- she would find it was a misunderstanding. Twenty four hours later I called her to inquire about the result. She had not bothered to call her friend, but had now changed her position: it did not matter whether or not we had gone to a park. What was significant was that I had suggested going to a park.

Perhaps I can dispel this foolish story by adding that there was no proposal to go anywhere "late at night," no proposal to go any place not full of perfectly respectable Chinese people, and not the least breach of decorum on my part.

In their hysteria, the students are also convinced that a grave impropriety occurred when two female students accompanied me to the hospital to see a doctor about a mild chest rash. The doctor, a Chinese man of about 55, spoke to my two students and to me. He knew they were my students. Then, with the girls in the same room, he asked me to remove my shirt, and I did so. This, an entire class of International Law students insisted to me, constituted a violation of Chinese cultural norms. Needless to say, in this case too, the girls never uttered a word of their grievance to my face, but only behind my back.

I asked the class why the Chinese doctor did not understand Chinese culture. The students had nothing coherent to say in reply.

The students are also very agitated about stories that have circulated about late-night phone calls made by me to the female dorms. Again, the anger and emotion are unfounded. The simple fact is that no one, before the complaint letters to the administration, ever hinted that there was any problem with any phone call I made, except once, when a student asked me not to call later than 11:00 PM. (I apologized and did as she requested. I normally called after 11:00 PM if I wanted to reach students at Tsinghua last year, because they usually did not return to their dorms earlier than that time.)

One of the examples of improper calls cited in the complaint letters is particularly astonishing. It involves a dinner held on Friday, November 1, to which I invited 14 of my students who assist me as volunteers. I have 2 volunteers in each of my 7 classes, and they assist me with photocopying and the maintenance of student lists. I invited the volunteers as a gesture of gratitude and friendliness.

To make arrangements with the restaurant I needed to know how many were coming, so I emailed the volunteers requesting that they either confirm attendance or let me know they would not be attending. A minority, however, were not checking their email (as they had agreed to do when becoming volunteers), so I was obliged to make phone calls in a few cases.

One of the ones I phoned, a girl, sent me an email the next day:

first i want to say sorry ,because i didn't check my mailbox frequently .and i do remember that you have told us we should check the mailbox every two days ,i don't want to find any excuse for the mistake .and i promise it will never happen again .

thanks a lot for your inviting , and i think i can attend it .please give me more detail on the time and location ,or i can't schedule my weekend .

regards.

The girl attended the dinner and apparently enjoyed herself. She certainly offered no hint to me that she or anyone else had a complaint about my call. I learned the following week, however, that the phone call I had to make to invite her was one of the examples given, in a complaint letter which she signed, of my objectionable calls to the female dorms.

Another complaint asserts that I am a classroom dictator -- I trample the students' rights to independent opinions, I brook no dissent, I condemn anyone who differs from me as being wrong.

I have discussed this complaint with several classes since I learned of it, and it is clear at this point that many students are captives of relativism -- the view that there is no absolute right and wrong, that all opinions are legitimate. Some students have argued quite strenuously that all questions have multiple correct answers, and it is wrong and offensive of me to insist on only one.

My teaching method in the classroom is to stimulate thinking and discussion about readings by posing questions. It is true that many of the answers I hear reflect errors of comprehension. (And, of course, I explain why.) I have asked the students, in discussing their complaint, to offer a single example of a "wrong" answer that could be defended. I have been teaching here for two months. Surely, if their complaint is warranted, they can produce at least one example?

At this, the critics fall silent. They can produce no example.

Not only do students actively resent a teacher telling them when they are wrong. It seems that these students feel it is inherently unjustifiable to label any idea as being wrong. I would submit that the education of these students is incomplete.

It was my firm intention as I began writing this letter not to make any reference to Ms. Wang Yan of the Foreign Affairs Office. But this resolution came to an end when a staff member of the IEC building knocked on my door as I was composing this letter tonight, at 9:45 PM, and handed me a letter from her.

This is a special day for me in China. No one has ever threatened to kill me before. The stark message delivered to me today says: "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."

I showed the letter shortly before noon to the staff of the Foreign Affairs Office, who were naturally perturbed. They sought advice from campus security on how to contact the Beijing police authorities, but campus security was unavailable so they asked me to return in the afternoon. When I did so they assured me that police authorities would be contacted and advised that the police might want to speak to me.

But Wang Yan was also present in the office. Although she had been told about the letter by her subordinates, she seemed completely unconcerned about the matter. She wanted to renew our conversation of the previous week in which she had brought the complaint letters to my attention. "How is your teaching going?" she began, as a prelude to telling me there had been further student complaints about me.

I pointed out that I had come to the office because of a death threat. She answered: "I don't know about that .... I have not read the letter yet." When I stressed that I hoped she would treat the matter seriously, she took me aback by saying the matter is "not our business." I said I thought it was very much the school's business if a teacher invited from abroad receives a death threat from students. Since this was too obvious to deny, she then said that what she had meant was that it's not her business to personally investigate a death threat -- a bizarre and irrelevant remark.

I mentioned how Li Ming had behaved in class. Her response was: "Why did he say that?" Wang Yan has so entirely swallowed the students' versions of events that she expects to find some way to blame me when a student tells me to "fuck off."

Wang Yan's attitude has made me reflect on the "abuse of power" charge that has been made against me, as well as her remark in our Nov. 5 meeting that she cannot show me the students' complaint letters because she needs to "protect the students" from me. It is of course self-evident to the students that I actually have very little power over them. Wang Yan, by contrast, has considerable power. I wonder whether the irresponsible accusations that have been made against me by students, and the delinquency exhibited by Li Ming, would be possible if the students did not sense some form of implicit approval from Wang Yan.

I returned to my apartment, expecting that I might hear from the police, or at least receive confirmation from someone that police had been contacted and would investigate. But there has been no word. Instead, the letter from Wang Yan berates me for my "attitudes towards the students" and criticizes me because last week, exceptionally, I ended one of my classes 20 minutes early, which her letter terms "a serious violation of the school regulation."

Although the Director of the Foreign Affairs Office is serene about this threat against my life, I take it seriously. I am obviously vulnerable if FAC does not take adequate measures to ensure my physical safety.

I do not have the impression that the students are any more revolted by this cowardly threat than Wang Yan. I received the threat letter during the mid-class break this morning and read it out loud to my Foreign Affairs class. Most of the students, some of whom may be China's future diplomats, laughed and seemed pleased and amused by the letter. When I told them that a death threat is a criminal act in the U.S. (and, I would expect, in China too), one girl asked sarcastically why I didn't sue the ungrateful students who had attended my group dinner.

I will be contacting the President of FAC about this matter shortly. If I am not assured, publicly, by a senior official of FAC, that the threat against me will be aggressively investigated and that FAC will guarantee my physical security, then you will not have to worry about any more complaints about me -- because I will leave FAC.

Of course, our main business here is teaching. It was my firm impression, until the abrupt change of atmosphere that occurred recently, that most students were quite pleased with what they were learning in my class. Even now, in the wake of the secret complaint letters, I would submit to you that the students are receiving an extraordinary lesson in groupthink, the phenomenon by which a cohesive group of people can arrive at delusional conclusions. Some students will be permanently angry and bitter, forever in the grip of the passions that have been aroused. Others may find the experience enlightening and derive important benefits from it in the future.

In inquiring into the points I have discussed above, it may be helpful to obtain further information from me. I would be pleased to meet with you and do everything I can to assist you in resolving the issues.

Sincerely,

Uriel Wittenberg