When money smells

Academic independence cannot be guaranteed if financial donations come with political compliance.

In recent years, the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) Amsterdam has conducted research on human rights in China. As part of this work, carried out by the university’s Cross-Cultural Human Rights Center, researchers travelled to Xinjiang province, notorious for the Chinese authorities’ mass incarceration of more than one million Uyghurs and members of other largely Muslim minorities. The CCHRC published the results of its investigations in a newsletter, financed through the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing.