Nerd News: "the Xinjiang 13" and China Blacklisting US Professors

Via View From Taiwan, a  disgusting tale of Chinese official bullying and, even worse, the refusal of some of the persecuted professors' home institutions to support them. Here's something by one of profs blacklisted for his research on Xinjiang (formerly "Eastern Turkestan"), a Turkic-Muslim region in northwest China:

"As a group, most of us have been very disappointed in the colleges’ and universities’ lack of sympathy and support," said Dru Gladney, an anthropology professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, who described himself and his American co-authors as the "Xinjiang 13." Colleges are "so eager to jump on the China bandwagon, they put financial interests ahead of academic freedom."

Sordid grasping edu-crats are sordid and grasping.  Maddening but not surprising. The least you and I can do is read the Xinjiang 13's research for which they have paid so high a personal and professional cost.  By the way, Professor Gladney's two contributions to the book are entitled "The Chinese Program of Development and Control, 1978-2001" and "Responses to Chinese Rule: Patterns of Cooperations and Opposition."

On a related note, note this small bit of the overall story, and it tells you plenty about freedom issues: "Former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Peter Perdue had to shift his research from Beijing to Taiwan in 2007 for a Fulbright fellowship awarded by the State Department because Chinese officials blocked his entry."