I can't read Swiss... but the comments on Reddit seem to show that this isn't as cut and dry as the title makes it sound. Quoting /u/hamsterman20:
> "First of all, he was going to a chinese university with a chinese scholarship.
> He left the swiss university because of some weird technicalities while attending the Chinese university.
> He posted political messages against china and 1 picture depicting a chinese with yellow skin and slit eyes.
> Im not surprised he was kicked out of the chinese university and that the supervisor wanted to distance themselves. Though I wish they would stand up against China, its hard when your career depends on it.
> His swiss university refused to take them back. Don't know why. Technicalities I guess."
I'm sure there's still more to the story, and that it obviously isn't entirely the student's fault, but it isn't like a Swiss Student randomly tweeted about the CCP and got kicked out.
> it isn't like a Swiss Student randomly tweeted about the CCP and got kicked out.
Based on the original article, it is pretty much exactly like that. The newspaper talked to both sides and clearly believes the student over the professor. It seems everything else are excuses by the Prof and the university (which has plenty of cooperations with China).
Now, if the student was technically enrolled at the University or the prof was "only" his PhD advisor, does not change anything about the story.
The NZZ, for what it is worth, is probably the most highly regarded newspaper in Switzerland when it comes to journalistic integrity. It has a clear political bias to the right, but very high credibility.
Reading the beginning of the English version of the article [1], it looks like the student was expelled from University of St. Gallen, which definitely sounds like a Swiss university.
However, from later on in the article, "Yet throughout the spring of 2020, the university stuck to its position that when the trouble over his tweets broke out, he had long since ceased to be a St. Gallen doctoral student."
So it looks like the guy wasn't technically a student at the university at the time.
I don't know but I would guess this was some kind of technical move that is commonly done but because he kicked up some trouble, the university used this technicality as an excuse to get rid of him.
There are several localized Swiss dialects and there are some Swiss German formal written publications in these local Swiss dialects that other Alemannic German readers have trouble understanding.
I recommend to continue reading the English article:
> Gerber's goal was to be able to continue studying at St. Gallen. But the university argued that the professor hadn’t kicked him out; rather, he had been deregistered at his own request quite some time ago. In fact, as of the fall 2019 semester, Gerber had been officially enrolled only at the university in China, not at St. Gallen. He had been advised to take this tack by the St. Gallen doctoral program manager. In an email, the manager had said this would ensure that the maximum time allowed for pursuit of the degree would not expire while Gerber was in China. «Deregistration allows you to keep all your options on the table,» the email had said. The reregistration process would be like applying all over again – but with the support of his professor, this would be no problem, the program manager said.
It then continues to talk about the voluntary nature of the continued support. The email that was received was also sent by a Chinese student in Canada
I mostly came here to post that I was surprised that this is legal in Switzerland.
A Ph.D. student is an employee, and even normal university students can in most countries not be so easily dismissed without some show of academic misconduct.
Organizations being legally allowed to dismiss without some compelling reason or court approval is a U.S.A. idiosyncrasy.
Considering that the CCP paid The NY Times, LA Times, and other major papers to publish propaganda pieces and not publish COVID lab leak pieces during 2020, I don't believe much of what I read when it comes to articles that could be deemed favorable to China.
> Als seine Freundin einige der Tweets sieht, ist sie schockiert. Sie bittet ihn am Telefon, damit aufzuhören. Nicht weil sie bei allem anderer Meinung wäre. Sondern weil sie sich vor Repressionen der chinesischen Regierung fürchtet. «Ich bin in der Schweiz, nicht in China», antwortet er. «Hier kann ich sagen, was ich will.»
Translation:
When his girlfriend saw some of his tweets she's aghast. She's asking him on the phone to stop. Not because she disagrees. But because she is afraid of repercussions by the Chinese government. "I'm in Switzerland, not China", he replies, "here I can say whatever I want".
Of course he should be able to speak his mind.
But when your girlfriend (who is Chinese and living in China) pleads for you to stop, maybe you should just take the hint. Not even for your sake ("I'm in Switzerland"), but for hers?
Isn't that exactly the point, though? Relationship trouble aside, influencing people's choice of words and freedom of expression by making their loved once fear repercussions from their government sounds exactly like the kind of abuse the Chinese government uses to crush dissent.
People who care deeply about China can't speak up to protect their people because their loved ones might fall victim to the governments wide-spread abuse of power. That's the kind of dystopia freedom of expression is meant to prevent. The fact his girlfriend felt threatened by his opinion is exactly the problem with the CCP and something we should all speak out against.
What bothers me about this whole ordeal is the fact that the Chinese gov seems to keep a watch on pretty much anyone's social media it seems. This guy supposedly had like 10 to 20 followers, and the tweet in question was only a reply.
It reminds me of the time when some athlete (if my memory serves me right) expressed sympathy with HK protests, and was made to apologize to the Chinese gov. But this guy is much less known than that.
It makes me wonder to what extend the CCP keeps a watch on foreign citizens. Do we all have a file in their social credit score system?
I would assume it was a reply to a popular comment, and it being a cartoon increases visibility for people clicking through.
Also not impossible that some paid or highly motivated people would reverse image search the picture in question and try to make problems for the people posting it.
I do also think that posting a racist cartoon is grounds for a professor to cut their ties to a PhD student. A PhD student isn't worth that much, and standing by them through accusations of racism is probably not worth the risk.
> What bothers me about this whole ordeal is the fact that the Chinese gov seems to keep a watch on pretty much anyone's social media it seems.
It's more likely that the Chinese government gives social credit for finding and outing such "troublemakers".
Thus the "Chinese student in Canada" sending the complaint.
By doing that, the Chinese government doesn't have to police everywhere. There will always be suckups willing to throw other people under the bus for tiny amounts of gain.
Deep down in the reddit comments there is a statement from the university, which mentioned "The former supervisor's desire to clearly distance herself is understandable when an accusation of racism is in the air." Some other comments also mentioned a "racist cartoon".
> The writer accuses Gerber of a «racist attack on the Chinese people.» He was referring to a specific tweet: a cartoon that Gerber had posted in response to another user's tweet. It depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes. This drawing circulated on social media in the spring of 2020, and was deemed racist by some users. Gerber said he only shared the cartoon because of its political message. The underlying topic had been China's stance toward Taiwan and Hong Kong. «In retrospect, I realize I didn't question the rendering of the Chinese person enough,» he said.
So it is about "yellow skin tone and slit eyes".
This is crazy. I don't understand how is this OK. One Twitter of cartoon , you are expelled? No chance of explanation or apologize?
Even the CCP wouldn't do this. I am pretty sure a Chinese student wouldn't be expelled from the university from one single anti-CCP social media post.
If I'm an employee at a company and post something like that on Twitter, nobody should be surprised if I suddenly find myself in the unemployment line because (perhaps unbeknownst to me) my company was right in the middle of closing a big deal with a Chinese company.
Not saying it's morally correct, but those are the dynamics in play here. A university is an organization, and while the incentives and financial structure is different from, say, a manufacturing corp, the general principle of "your members will be dealt with if they burn bridges for the larger organization" applies.
The "dynamics at play" here begins and ends with the company itself making deals with authoritarian countries. The fact the brunt of the consequences trickles down to employees or students who grew up and live in a society with free expression and independent judicial systems is merely just side effects.
I find it very difficult to point the finger at those individuals.
The amount of extrapolation being done here from a single post on social media is almost ridiculous. Not to mention communicating on personal profiles, not as some representative for the company. Context and intention matter.
This will ultimately have a wider effect on society as a whole, if organizations decide to act as proxies for countries with different value systems and people bring out pitchforks over some mindless throw-away social media content. We'll end up with the society we all choose to create.
As long as it's not clearly hateful, universities typically allow greater freedom of expression than you normally get in a commercial organization, because the ability to criticize the zeitgeist and common sense belief is critical to the development of the arts & sciences.
Of course, there is typically a tension between allowing academic freedom and pleasing whoever holds the purse strings. University administrations often have to very carefully balance between upsetting their income sources and devolving into a propaganda machine.
We currently have a severe moral panic on the topic of racism. Almost everyone accused and not distancing themselves from anything that could be remotely associated with it makes someone guilty.
Just to remember: Racism is if you attribute properties to races, a very unscientific term, and think yourself superior to others due to these properties. Luckily, that is a quite rare occurrence today.
It doesn't have anything to do with power, it doesn't have anything to do with privilege and most people accused of it are innocent. There are exceptions of course.
Maybe it would be better to change the URL to https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/oxmgg2/phd_student_... so that we can read the comment threads more easily; the Redditors are picking apart the claims in the article from different angles, while the newspaper is not.
This is a really good overview of one of the Financial Times' top rated business school programs in the world, where this PhD student was expelled from, in Switzerland, with an extremely damning report of the program and how they cook the books to make it look like you would have a chance of making it in a place like Switzerland post-graduation.
What is really damning about it: You have zero chance of integrating unless you have an EU passport from about 8 or so countries, unless you are Swiss. It is very insightful, actually.
Great example of a clickbait headline right there. No love lost for the CCP from my side, but making stuff up is stupid. The guy burned bridges with his doctoral advisor, left the uni, went to China to study in a Chinese university and posted a racist cartoon about Chinese people. Then after they expelled him (figures) he tried to force his way back into the previous one. None of this is the least bit controversial.
This is misrepresenting the article quite a bit. The newspaper also sides with him after having reviewed all accounts.
He did not "burn" bridges, the relationship was very positive up until the complaint. And he "left" the Uni only temporarily because of an administrative technicality. This is a common thing in German-speaking countries. Some universities have hard limits on the total terms of study. You can avoid racking up total terms by temporarily ex-matriculating yourself.
He also only retweeted the "racist" cartoon and did not think much of it. He was not even aware it was considered to be problematic. Something like this can easily happen to anyone. Especially, in the heated debate climate of the last year.
They university did not expel him, the advisor just cut off all contact. This is more a Kafkaesque situation where the university is exploiting a technicality to comply with Chinese pressure.
He hasn't tried to reenroll, because he was unable to find an advisor in the same department. Taking an advisor from a different department would mean to start over on his thesis. I'm not sure what would have happened if he was still enrolled in this case. It seems to me that no one can force an adviser to work with him, so this talk about enrollment is a moot point.
Also, according the professor, the only Chinese pressure was an email from a Chinese foreign student in Canada who felt offended by the cartoon. It seems like the initial email from the professor was just not worded carefully and had some speculations about visa repercussions and that is what the entire article is based on.
I am Chinese by ethnicity. He is responsible for what he share on public. He studied in China I am sure that he is aware that kind cartoon has racist connotation.
After reading the English version of the article [0] shared by others in this thread, this look like the adviser has (rightfully or not) panicked and distanced herself from the PhD student (Gerber). The adviser, in her first email, mentions «angry emails from China», but then, when the journalist contacts her, she only refers to a single email from a Chinese doctoral student from Canada.
> The writer [of the email] accuses Gerber of a «racist attack on the Chinese people.» He was referring to a specific tweet: a cartoon that Gerber had posted in response to another user's tweet. It depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes.
> The professor's first email clearly shows that she feared she would no longer be able to obtain a Chinese visa because of Gerber's tweets.
> In the early summer of 2020, Gerber decided to abandon the legal effort. He said he didn't complete the enrollment application because he couldn't find a new adviser: «There was no other professor in the same department with whom I could have finished my work. Changing topics would have meant starting from scratch again after three and a half years. That was out of the question for me.»
The article clearly sides with Gerber on the issue, but I don't think an adviser can be forced to work with a specific PhD candidate. On the other hand, I think this is an important debate:
> [...] Gerber's case demonstrates that China's aggressive foreign policy can in fact influence how academics in Switzerland publicly express themselves, and how they deal with critical comments from their students. It shows that some researchers are willing to restrict their own and others’ activities in order to avoid upsetting China.
There are literally millions of Twitter accounts posting puerile sinophobic memes/spam on Twitter on a daily basis. It's a billion-dollar industry; the USG just earmarked $1.5B specifically for anti-China propaganda [1]. Not that Gerber was getting paid for it--he's a small fish.
Oliver Gerber is not a real name, it would be not trivial to find his twitter account. Not quite impossible too, but still too much hassle for most people (myself included).
Readit News
I can't read Swiss... but the comments on Reddit seem to show that this isn't as cut and dry as the title makes it sound. Quoting /u/hamsterman20:
> "First of all, he was going to a chinese university with a chinese scholarship.
> He left the swiss university because of some weird technicalities while attending the Chinese university.
> He posted political messages against china and 1 picture depicting a chinese with yellow skin and slit eyes.
> Im not surprised he was kicked out of the chinese university and that the supervisor wanted to distance themselves. Though I wish they would stand up against China, its hard when your career depends on it.
> His swiss university refused to take them back. Don't know why. Technicalities I guess."
I'm sure there's still more to the story, and that it obviously isn't entirely the student's fault, but it isn't like a Swiss Student randomly tweeted about the CCP and got kicked out.
Based on the original article, it is pretty much exactly like that. The newspaper talked to both sides and clearly believes the student over the professor. It seems everything else are excuses by the Prof and the university (which has plenty of cooperations with China).
Now, if the student was technically enrolled at the University or the prof was "only" his PhD advisor, does not change anything about the story.
Edit: English version of the article here: https://www.nzz.ch/english/swiss-phd-students-dismissal-spot...
Reading the beginning of the English version of the article [1], it looks like the student was expelled from University of St. Gallen, which definitely sounds like a Swiss university.
[1] https://www.nzz.ch/english/swiss-phd-students-dismissal-spot...
So it looks like the guy wasn't technically a student at the university at the time.
I don't know but I would guess this was some kind of technical move that is commonly done but because he kicked up some trouble, the university used this technicality as an excuse to get rid of him.
Of course in this case, the write-up is in standard high German. Google Translate handles that just fine.
The Germans might see that a bit different than us ;) Jokes aside, the article was of course in German.
> Gerber's goal was to be able to continue studying at St. Gallen. But the university argued that the professor hadn’t kicked him out; rather, he had been deregistered at his own request quite some time ago. In fact, as of the fall 2019 semester, Gerber had been officially enrolled only at the university in China, not at St. Gallen. He had been advised to take this tack by the St. Gallen doctoral program manager. In an email, the manager had said this would ensure that the maximum time allowed for pursuit of the degree would not expire while Gerber was in China. «Deregistration allows you to keep all your options on the table,» the email had said. The reregistration process would be like applying all over again – but with the support of his professor, this would be no problem, the program manager said.
It then continues to talk about the voluntary nature of the continued support. The email that was received was also sent by a Chinese student in Canada
Deleted Comment
What? There is no "Swiss" language, the article is in German
A Ph.D. student is an employee, and even normal university students can in most countries not be so easily dismissed without some show of academic misconduct.
Organizations being legally allowed to dismiss without some compelling reason or court approval is a U.S.A. idiosyncrasy.
Deleted Comment
[0] https://dailycaller.com/2020/06/08/chinese-propaganda-china-... [1] https://efile.fara.gov/docs/3457-Amendment-20200601-2.pdf
Translation:
When his girlfriend saw some of his tweets she's aghast. She's asking him on the phone to stop. Not because she disagrees. But because she is afraid of repercussions by the Chinese government. "I'm in Switzerland, not China", he replies, "here I can say whatever I want".
Of course he should be able to speak his mind.
But when your girlfriend (who is Chinese and living in China) pleads for you to stop, maybe you should just take the hint. Not even for your sake ("I'm in Switzerland"), but for hers?
People who care deeply about China can't speak up to protect their people because their loved ones might fall victim to the governments wide-spread abuse of power. That's the kind of dystopia freedom of expression is meant to prevent. The fact his girlfriend felt threatened by his opinion is exactly the problem with the CCP and something we should all speak out against.
It reminds me of the time when some athlete (if my memory serves me right) expressed sympathy with HK protests, and was made to apologize to the Chinese gov. But this guy is much less known than that.
It makes me wonder to what extend the CCP keeps a watch on foreign citizens. Do we all have a file in their social credit score system?
Also not impossible that some paid or highly motivated people would reverse image search the picture in question and try to make problems for the people posting it.
I do also think that posting a racist cartoon is grounds for a professor to cut their ties to a PhD student. A PhD student isn't worth that much, and standing by them through accusations of racism is probably not worth the risk.
It's more likely that the Chinese government gives social credit for finding and outing such "troublemakers".
Thus the "Chinese student in Canada" sending the complaint.
By doing that, the Chinese government doesn't have to police everywhere. There will always be suckups willing to throw other people under the bus for tiny amounts of gain.
This is not unique to China.
Dead Comment
It is also mentioned in the report: https://www.nzz.ch/english/swiss-phd-students-dismissal-spot...
> The writer accuses Gerber of a «racist attack on the Chinese people.» He was referring to a specific tweet: a cartoon that Gerber had posted in response to another user's tweet. It depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes. This drawing circulated on social media in the spring of 2020, and was deemed racist by some users. Gerber said he only shared the cartoon because of its political message. The underlying topic had been China's stance toward Taiwan and Hong Kong. «In retrospect, I realize I didn't question the rendering of the Chinese person enough,» he said.
So it is about "yellow skin tone and slit eyes".
This is crazy. I don't understand how is this OK. One Twitter of cartoon , you are expelled? No chance of explanation or apologize?
Even the CCP wouldn't do this. I am pretty sure a Chinese student wouldn't be expelled from the university from one single anti-CCP social media post.
Not saying it's morally correct, but those are the dynamics in play here. A university is an organization, and while the incentives and financial structure is different from, say, a manufacturing corp, the general principle of "your members will be dealt with if they burn bridges for the larger organization" applies.
I find it very difficult to point the finger at those individuals.
The amount of extrapolation being done here from a single post on social media is almost ridiculous. Not to mention communicating on personal profiles, not as some representative for the company. Context and intention matter.
This will ultimately have a wider effect on society as a whole, if organizations decide to act as proxies for countries with different value systems and people bring out pitchforks over some mindless throw-away social media content. We'll end up with the society we all choose to create.
Of course, there is typically a tension between allowing academic freedom and pleasing whoever holds the purse strings. University administrations often have to very carefully balance between upsetting their income sources and devolving into a propaganda machine.
Just to remember: Racism is if you attribute properties to races, a very unscientific term, and think yourself superior to others due to these properties. Luckily, that is a quite rare occurrence today.
It doesn't have anything to do with power, it doesn't have anything to do with privilege and most people accused of it are innocent. There are exceptions of course.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
Or was that sarcasm?
Deleted Comment
This is a really good overview of one of the Financial Times' top rated business school programs in the world, where this PhD student was expelled from, in Switzerland, with an extremely damning report of the program and how they cook the books to make it look like you would have a chance of making it in a place like Switzerland post-graduation.
What is really damning about it: You have zero chance of integrating unless you have an EU passport from about 8 or so countries, unless you are Swiss. It is very insightful, actually.
He did not "burn" bridges, the relationship was very positive up until the complaint. And he "left" the Uni only temporarily because of an administrative technicality. This is a common thing in German-speaking countries. Some universities have hard limits on the total terms of study. You can avoid racking up total terms by temporarily ex-matriculating yourself.
He also only retweeted the "racist" cartoon and did not think much of it. He was not even aware it was considered to be problematic. Something like this can easily happen to anyone. Especially, in the heated debate climate of the last year.
They university did not expel him, the advisor just cut off all contact. This is more a Kafkaesque situation where the university is exploiting a technicality to comply with Chinese pressure.
Also, according the professor, the only Chinese pressure was an email from a Chinese foreign student in Canada who felt offended by the cartoon. It seems like the initial email from the professor was just not worded carefully and had some speculations about visa repercussions and that is what the entire article is based on.
https://www.nzz.ch/english/swiss-phd-students-dismissal-spot...
> The writer [of the email] accuses Gerber of a «racist attack on the Chinese people.» He was referring to a specific tweet: a cartoon that Gerber had posted in response to another user's tweet. It depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes.
> The professor's first email clearly shows that she feared she would no longer be able to obtain a Chinese visa because of Gerber's tweets.
> In the early summer of 2020, Gerber decided to abandon the legal effort. He said he didn't complete the enrollment application because he couldn't find a new adviser: «There was no other professor in the same department with whom I could have finished my work. Changing topics would have meant starting from scratch again after three and a half years. That was out of the question for me.»
The article clearly sides with Gerber on the issue, but I don't think an adviser can be forced to work with a specific PhD candidate. On the other hand, I think this is an important debate:
> [...] Gerber's case demonstrates that China's aggressive foreign policy can in fact influence how academics in Switzerland publicly express themselves, and how they deal with critical comments from their students. It shows that some researchers are willing to restrict their own and others’ activities in order to avoid upsetting China.
[0] https://www.nzz.ch/english/swiss-phd-students-dismissal-spot...
There were less than 10 people following or presumably reading Gerber's tweets.
Now 10 million+ people will read them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
[1] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/7937...