Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Questioning Confucius

The finals edition of the Western Herald has an editorial on the opening of Western's new Confucius Institute, which is funded by the communist Chinese government. The editorial is apparently not online.

The editorial falls into the not-too-bad category. On the downside, it makes reference to the supposed "Red Scare" of the 1950s. This term implies that the threat of communism was illusory or exaggerated. But as it was, communists murdered about 150 million people, and they would have killed many more without vigorous efforts to thwart them. In comparison, that's approximately 150 million more people than have been killed by global warming.

On the upside, the article expressed concern about the possibility of China using the institute to influence curricula. It noted that Penn University rejected the possibility of hosting a Confucius Institute.

This issue bears further scrutiny.

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