https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/11/11/a-human-rights-researcher-on-why-she-pushed-back-when-china-bullied-her-university Democratic governments must resist authoritarian states trying to co-opt their institutions, writes Laura Murphy Whatever the reasons—whether commercial, legal, ethical or
reputational—these documents suggest the university had knowingly
and deliberately complied with the demands of a foreign statesecurity agency to silence me and my researchers, among them
Uyghurs who risked their own and their families’ wellbeing to expose
Chinese abuses. SHU administrators clearly no longer shared their
courage.
Academic freedom is the cornerstone of knowledge production in
democratic societies. Preserving it requires that universities shelter
researchers from the retaliation of authoritarian governments by
refusing to surrender to threats or put harnesses on their faculty’s
research agenda. Universities protect that freedom in part by
securing the necessary insurance to cover their researchers. And
they provide financial and administrative support to faculty to pursue
the questions that animate them, regardless of whether they are
considered “sensitive”. We must not allow those who seek to
deny rights abuses to co-opt our democratic institutions, such as
courts, media or universities. Those who comply with such demands
encourage bad actors to extort similar submission out of others. The
effects are corrosive of our institutions, our freedoms, our
knowledge and our power to effect change
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