Yale responded to a protest by Chinese graduate students by enabling the student at the center of the protest to enable to stay on campus and in the country. Following is the text of a press release by the protest’s organizers praising Yale for doing “the right thing” in this case and outlining what some more of the “right thing” would entail.
Yale takes first step towards ending discrimination against Chinese scholars
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 25, 2005
Further information: Mandi Jackson (203) 915‑6667 John Canham-Clyne (203) 668‑2064
Only five days after a majority of Yale University’s Chinese graduate teachers and researchers filed a class-action grievance with Dean of the Graduate School alleging a pattern of discrimination on the basis of national origin, the Yale administration has taken a first step towards addressing the concerns raised in the grievance. Today, in a meeting with Yale administrators, Xuemei Han, the student whose case is at the center of the grievance, was guaranteed a place in the Forestry School and promised that she would continue to receive her Fan Fellowship. This move by the Yale administration is a significant victory in an ongoing campus campaign, led by the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), to end discrimination against Chinese scholars at Yale.
Han along with hundreds of her colleagues filed the grievance because she was being asked by administrators to leave the university at the end of the year because she was “not in good academic standing.” Ms. Han has passed all exams and requirements, produced a first-authored paper, passed her language tests, and started her research. As the only Chinese scholar in her previous department, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Han says she was told she “was not going to be allowed to stay in the department because no faculty members wanted to work with me.” Han maintained that faculty in her department claimed it would be too much work to advise a Chinese student because of language difficulties.
After today’s meeting Xuemei said, “I am very happy that Yale did the right thing by resolving my case. Now, I hope that Yale continues on the right path and agrees to the other demands in the complaint we filed — “establishing a fair and impartial grievance procedure, and holding a full investigation and open hearing on this pattern of discrimination.”
Han’s case is the latest of a string of cases in recent years in which Chinese scholars have been singled out in their departments for “bad academic standing” and forced to rigorously defend their academic records. Jian Xu, an electrical engineer who faced a similar situation last year, was asked to leave the university last spring but testified in the grievance that he was then expected to stay and work in his lab without pay through the summer months before his visa expired. “There are so many Chinese students facing this problem every year,” said Xu. “Few of them happen to American students. Personally I have never seen one.”
The grievance provides documents alleging improper behaviors on the part of administrators, including intimidation, erroneous reporting of academic performance, and explicit acts of discriminatory treatment. The grievance seeks specific remedies for Ms. Han’s case and asks for a permanent system of third party dispute resolution for Chinese scholars. Three hundred nineteen scholars from the graduate school signed the grievance, including a clear majority (155) of the 274 Chinese scholars on campus.
After today’s victory, Chinese teachers and researchers at Yale are cautiously optimistic that the administration will finally listen to them by taking significant public steps to end discrimination against Chinese scholars on campus. As Cong Huang, the President of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Yale (ACSSY) and Mary Reynolds, the President of GESO editorialized in the Yale Daily News, “The Yale administration faces a critical choice — We hope they take this opportunity to do right by Xuemei, to implement a real grievance procedure and to begin the difficult task of ending discriminatory practices against Chinese teachers and researchers at Yale.”