Chairman Smith and Members of the Subcommittee, I thank you for the
opportunity to testify this morning about the opportunities that are created when an
American research university develops a strong presence in China.
My name is Jeffrey Lehman, and I am testifying in my capacity as the vice
chancellor of NYU Shanghai. NYU Shanghai has just completed its second year of
activity as the third degree-granting campus of New York University.
I shall begin by describing my own experiences over the past seven years leading
academic institutions inside China that are committed to principles of academic freedom.
I will then provide a brief overview of NYU Shanghai. In the most extensive part of my
testimony, I will discuss the reasons why a great research university like New York
University would accept the challenge of creating a degree-granting campus in Shanghai.
Next, I will address some of the concerns voiced by those who believe it is inappropriate
for American universities to teach and conduct research in China. Finally, I will discuss
one way that the United States government can be of assistance in this regard.
I. My Personal Background in China
Before coming to NYU, I served as a law clerk to Judge Frank Coffin at the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and to Justice John Paul Stevens at the Supreme
Court, as a tax lawyer here in Washington, as a professor of law and public policy at the
University of Michigan, as the dean of the University of Michigan Law School, as the
president of Cornell University, as a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars.
I moved to China in 2008, because the president and vice president of Peking
University asked me to help them found a new law school as part of that university, the
School of Transnational Law (“STL”). STL would teach law in the American style,
using the Socratic method to study U.S. law, Chinese law, and international law, in a
program that would lead both to a traditional J.D. degree and to a Chinese J.M. degree.
This was to be the newest element in China’s effort to carry out small experiments with
approaches to higher education that are different from the approaches generally used at
Chinese universities.
I resisted the idea at first, as I was not a student of China, I did not speak any
Chinese, and I was unfamiliar with the operations of a Chinese university. Eventually,
however, I decided to take on the project, significantly at the urging of Justice Anthony
Kennedy of our Supreme Court, and of the Chairman of the C.V. Starr Foundation, Hank
Greenberg, each of whom stressed my patriotic duties as an American to help the rule of
law continue to develop in China. I accepted Peking University
’s request, but only on the
conditions that I would have absolute control over the school’s curriculum, faculty,
teaching style, and operations, and that I would receive an ironclad guarantee that I could
operate the school according to the principles of academic freedom that were
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fundamental to my own experience of higher education
throughout my career in the
United States.
Those conditions were fully honored during my time at STL. Students took
classes with leading law professors from Harvard and Stanford and Michigan and
Virginia, and a former senior lawyer at the U.S. State Department. They studied
American constitutional principles with Mark Rosenbaum, the legal director of the
American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and learned about international
criminal and human rights tribunals from Mike Greco, past president of the American Bar
Association and Chair of the Advisory Council of the ABA Center for Human Rights.
I had the privilege of serving as a member of the United States delegation to the
U.S.-China Legal Experts Dialogue in 2011 and again in 2012, and of discussing my
experiences with our students at STL. Later in 2012, I took on the responsibilities of
being the founding vice chancellor of NYU Shanghai.
II. An Overview of NYU Shanghai
NYU Shanghai is a unique institution.
On the one hand, it is a full, degree-granting campus of New York University.
All degrees are awarded by the trustees of New York University, in full compliance with
the accreditation requirements of the Middle States Association. On the other hand, it is,
like STL, also part of the effort inside China to carry out small experiments with
approaches to higher education that are different from the approaches generally used at
Chinese universities, legally chartered as the first Sino-American Joint Venture
University.
The creation of NYU Shanghai followed a similar pattern to that involved in the
creation of STL. NYU agreed to participate on the conditions that it would have absolute
control over the school’s curriculum, faculty, teaching style, and operations, and that it
would receive an ironclad guarantee that it could operate the school according to the
fundamental principles of academic freedom. NYU also required that the school operate
in compliance with a 14-point statement of labor values.
As vice chancellor, I am charged with running the university’s academic and
academic support operations. I serve at the pleasure of the president of New York
University. Because the graduates of NYU Shanghai will receive NYU degrees, NYU
has exclusive and final responsibility over faculty appointments, curriculum, student
admissions, etcetera.
We have structured our school so that half the undergraduates come from China,
and half come from the rest of the world. Every Chinese student has a non-Chinese