Last fall, Harvard University once again found itself in the crosshairs of the U.S. Congress in a spat that left both institutions compromising American values and competitiveness. On October 18, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a report on its investigation into Harvard’s handling of an incident that occurred during remarks by China’s ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, at an on-campus conference in April. As was reported in the days following the conference, an unidentified man had forcibly removed a peaceful protester from the auditorium. One of the objectives of the Committee’s investigation, launched in July, was to determine whether the incident constituted transnational repression by the Chinese Communist Party.
The results of the investigation were mixed. On one hand, the report and documents released in October provide no evidence of transnational repression, nor, as some in Congress have alleged, that Harvard has been “infiltrated” by the CCP. On the other hand, the investigation did find that Harvard disciplined multiple student protesters (undergraduates at the College) but did not discipline the assailant, who turned out to be a student at the Graduate School of Education.
The incident and the response to it by Congress as well as Harvard do not bode well for the future of critical inquiry and free expression about China in American universities. Congress has both gone too far and not far enough. The investigation revealed Harvard’s unfair punishment of peaceful protesters and released documents that raise new, crucial questions about the original incident. Instead of pursuing those questions, however, some representatives have continued to fuel paranoia about Chinese government influence at Harvard without providing any evidence. This conduct does not help anyone better understand what happened and what should be done about it, and instead threatens research, campus life, and ultimately, American competitiveness. Harvard, for its part, has drawn precisely the wrong lesson from the scandal: it not only failed to deter the assailant in the first place but has since revised its policy on public speaking events to make it easier for invited speakers to avoid audience engagement.
The event in question took place on the morning of Saturday, April 20, 2024, at the “China Conference” (the 2024 theme was “Rebuilding Trust in Turbulent Times”) at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), which was organized by the HKS Greater China Society, a student group. I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard at the time and was in the audience and witnessed what took place, part of which was also captured on video.
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Ambassador Xie delivered the opening keynote address at the conference between approximately 8:45 and 9:30 AM. Five protesters in the audience disrupted the event. Early on in the Ambassador’s remarks, the first protester stood up with a banner reading “CHINA LIES” and started shouting in English, “Xie Feng, you’ve come to paint the illusion of a prosperous China, but your hands are painted with blood! You’ve robbed the Hong Kongers of their most fundamental freedoms!” Within seconds, a male in a dark turtleneck and dark suit marched toward the protester, grabbed her, struggled with her as she resisted, and then pulled her away from the seating area and out of the auditorium.
As this was happening, one of the conference organizers approached the podium next to Ambassador Xie and thanked us (the audience) for our patience, but was interrupted by a second protestor, who stood up with a banner reading “PEOPLE DIE” and shouted: “Eighty percent of Tibetan children are forced into colonial boarding schools that are aimed to destroy my Tibetan people’s existence! Shame on Xie Feng! Shame on Xie Feng!” The conference organizer continued, stating that Harvard welcomes “diverse perspectives” and “discussion during the Q&A session” while the second protester went on: “Two million Uyhgurs are locked in concentration camps! They are subject to rape, torture, forced organ harvesting, sterilization! Shame on Xie Feng!”
As the second protestor repeatedly cried “Free Tibet!” HKS Professor Anthony Saich, who was scheduled to moderate a later panel and had been seated in the front row, approached the stage and attempted to calm things down, suggesting that while the students could express their views, “we would like to give our guest [Ambassador Xie] the opportunity to make his views known.” The second protester continued to shout “You have blood on your hands! Shame on Xie Feng!” and “guilty of genocide!” as she was escorted out of the auditorium by uniformed Harvard security personnel. After a few moments, the conference organizer repeated his statement: “Thank you, everyone, for your patience. Harvard welcomes diverse perspectives, and we welcome any feedback and suggestions and comments during the Q&A segment of our panel discussion…” Over the next several minutes, two more protesters stood up and started shouting—also about China’s treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Hong Kongers—and were each escorted away from the seating area and out of the auditorium by Harvard security staff.
The chaotic scene captured the politically fraught nature of high-profile China-related events on university campuses. From my seat on the other side of the auditorium, I thought the male who grabbed the first protester looked Chinese, like most of the conference organizers and members of the HKS Greater China Society. The thought that he might be affiliated with the Chinese Embassy crossed my mind, but that didn’t seem right—his long hair and stylish look didn’t fit my impression of Chinese security staff. I also thought it was unlikely that an official at a posting as important as the embassy in Washington would so brazenly resort to violence at such a public and prestigious forum.
But it also occurred to me that I might be naive. China’s government has a reputation for bullying and intimidating protesters and dissidents overseas. The line between Chinese state-backed repression and violence committed by individuals who belong to groups that are supported by or maintain contact with the Chinese state can be blurry. In September 2024, the Washington Post published an investigation into violent clashes between anti-Chinese Communist Party protesters and pro-CCP counter-protesters in San Francisco during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to that city in November 2023. Reporters found video footage showing four diplomats from the Chinese consulates in San Francisco and Los Angeles “directly interacting with aggressive actors,” as well the leaders of some Chinese diaspora groups “with ties to the Chinese state” participating in some of the violence. In October 2022, during a protest over Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong in front of the Chinese consulate in Manchester, England, a group of men—which allegedly included Consul-General Zheng Xiyuan—dragged a pro-democracy protester onto consulate grounds and beat him (Zheng has denied the allegations). I wasn’t thinking about these specific cases at the time, but they speak to why it was reasonable to contemplate whether the assailant may have had a connection to the embassy.
Ambassador Xie resumed his remarks, but continuous chanting by protesters outside the auditorium made for an awkward atmosphere. At 8:59 AM, I texted a friend who was not in attendance: “We are about 15 minutes in and so far 4 quite dramatic individual interruptions of [A]mbassador Xie/Forcibly removed/and they are screaming outside.” At 9:10 AM, shortly before a fifth protester started shouting, I again texted my friend that “The latter three [protesters] seemed to be removed by Harvard police or security/The first one was rougher and seemed unaffiliated with Harvard/Chinese,” indicating that I thought the assailant looked Chinese. I remarked to another friend seated next to me that the man in the dark turtleneck did not appear to be Harvard security. At a coffee break after Ambassador Xie’s remarks, I saw a Harvard security staff member talking with another conference organizer; I heard the security staffer mention the way the first protester had been handled, and it was clear from his tone that he found it problematic. (In the upper-left quadrant of a video posted to Instagram later, a man who appears to be a Harvard official can be seen confronting the assailant after the incident, seemingly admonishing him while gesturing at him with his finger.)
My sense that I had witnessed something very wrong grew stronger as I continued to reflect on it. Later that day, after I left the conference, I described the incident in several conversations, including with two colleagues separately in person and members of my family over the phone. At around 1:00 PM the following day (Sunday, April 21), after attending the morning session of the second day of of the conference, I sent an email with the subject “potential unauthorized security action by non-affiliate at HKS event” to Debbie Isaacson, the Senior Associate Dean for Degree Programs and Student Affairs at HKS, expressing my concern. I described the incident and said “As far as I could tell, protestors #2-5 were escorted out by Harvard security. However, the first protester was taken out in an aggressive and forceful manner [by someone] who did not appear to be authorized Harvard security. The person who removed the first protestor appeared to be Chinese [sic] man and was not wearing any identifying badge. It was not clear to me whether he was affiliated with the embassy. I noted that he stayed at the event after the ambassador left.” (Note: by “badge” I meant a security or police officer’s badge; it is clear from the video that he is wearing a conference organizer badge.)
I received a reply from Isaacson about an hour later, thanking me for bringing the matter to her attention and copying Brian Conroy, HKS Director of Security, and Joshua McIntosh, HKS Executive Dean. I sent a follow-up email the following Tuesday, April 23, to share a link to one of the video recordings of the incident that had been posted online. That afternoon, Conroy replied, thanking me for the information, stating that he had been present at the conference in his official capacity, and agreeing that “I find that matter with this individual removing the protestor just as concerning as you.” He further stated that “I can confirm that this unknown person was not a member of the Harvard Police or Security and in fact had no security responsibility role at all for the event. The HUPD is well aware of this and is working on identifying the person for follow up.” I then replied a few minutes later, pointing out that “the person in question seems to have been wearing a badge provided by the conference organizers.”
None of the three HKS officials on the email thread replied to my message. After two weeks without any follow-up, I replied to the same email thread on May 9 and asked for an update. I also expressed my hope for some formal acknowledgment of the incident by HKS and pointed out that, contrary to HKS policy in its 2023-24 student handbook, the ambassador had not taken questions:
Whatever happens to the person in question, there should also be some formal acknowledgment of the incident and affirmation of basic Harvard rules and principles regarding free expression and assembly. I also note that the ambassador did not take questions, which is required for HKS guests according to the school’s events rules. It is my understanding that this is an annual event, and it is important to make sure that future conferences and guests adhere to all the rules.
Later that evening, Isaacson replied, explaining that the appropriate authorities had been notified and that they were not at liberty to share more information about the outcome of the reporting. She also noted that it was indeed a requirement that all invited speakers take questions from the audience.
This was my final correspondence with the HKS officials. For months, there seemed to be no movement on the issue. Then, on July 1, the House Select Committee issued a press release announcing a probe into the April incident and Harvard’s handling of it. In a letter addressed to Interim Harvard President Alan Garber, Committee Chairman John Moolenaar framed the incident as a potential case of “transnational repression by the Chinese government.” The letter included a list of questions regarding Harvard’s security and disciplinary policies, potential exchanges with the Chinese government, and the identity of the “person in the dark suit,” the assailant. It also referred to reporting by Voice of America Chinese on a subsequent disturbing development: one of the student protesters (not the one who had been removed by the assailant) told VoA, as stated in the letter to Garber, “that a student from China, who appeared to be one of the organizers, approached her and asked for the names of protestors. That individual then followed her, causing her to feel scared.”
Three and a half months later, in mid-October, the Select Committee announced the completion of its probe and released a collection of pertinent documents, including Harvard university policies, disciplinary records, police reports, and emails from university administrators, as well as a formal letter sent by Harvard’s lawyer on behalf of university leadership. Initially reported in the Washington Free Beacon, the findings of the investigation establish several key facts. First, the assailant was enrolled at the time of the incident as a master’s student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (GSE). He was also a member of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at Harvard, which, along with branches at other universities in the United States, are often portrayed in the media as arms of Chinese state or Chinese Communist Party influence. However, it could not be determined whether he was a member of the HKS Greater China Society, which organized the conference. Second, the assailant claimed that he had forcibly removed the first protester after having heard someone he believed was a conference staff member say “quickly maintain order.” Third, three of the five protesters, including the one forcibly removed by the assailant, were undergraduate students at Harvard College. The other two protesters were not Harvard students. Fourth, the Harvard University Police Department submitted an assault and battery incident report, but the assaulted protester did not wish to pursue charges, and no such charges were brought. Fifth, administrators at Harvard College (the unit within the University responsible for undergraduates) placed three of the protesters (including the one who was assaulted) on disciplinary probation for three days as punishment for “inappropriate social behavior involving a violation of the University-wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities.” Sixth, Martin West, GSE Academic Dean, declined to discipline the assailant, even though he had been found in violation of the school’s policies.
The released documents provide insight into West’s thought process but also raise at least two additional questions related to inconsistencies across accounts of what happened. First, did someone actually tell the assailant to remove the protester? If so, who? A letter (date redacted, after May 8) from the GSE Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and Student Life (name redacted) to Dean West refers to an April 22 conversation in which the assailant explained that “he was acting on the direction of a faculty member who indicated that they could not have those disruptions during the Ambassador [sic] talk.” Another email addressed to West dated May 10 quotes the assailant as offering a much vaguer explanation to an administrator asking him about the incident: “I was stationed in the staff area of the venue (to the left of the stage). When there was disorder during the conference, I heard an event staff member remind me to ‘quickly maintain order.’” This is an unidiomatic and cartoonishly robotic command, and I am doubtful that anyone would have said these exact words in this context in English. “Remind” is also a strange choice of words—had these instructions been given before? Moreover, the assailant appears to have been unable to identify who actually gave these (possibly repeated) instructions. His quotation in the email continues: “I have a rough idea of what they looked like, some were guests sitting in the front row, maybe advisors of the HKS China Conference, but I don’t really know their full names.” In his May 22 email to the assailant, West uses even vaguer and more exculpatory language: “I understand that your intentions were to prevent the event from being further disrupted and that you had received guidance from event organizers to intervene as you did. While it would have been preferable to [sic] the security officers at the event handle the protest, your action is understandable in that context.”
Harvard administrators were clearly concerned about this question too; an email thread among several officials between May 9 and May 20 includes two separate queries about who told the assailant to remove the protester. On May 9, West (“Marty”) asked: “Do we know the name of the faculty member and can we confirm the guidance [redacted] was provided?” Thus, between sending this email on May 9 and writing to the assailant on May 22, West determined that it was a conference staff member and not a faculty member who gave the “guidance,” and that such “guidance” was sufficiently clear and direct so as to make the assailant’s violent removal of the protestor “understandable.” Clearly, who provided this guidance, and what their exact words were, remain crucial and unanswered questions based on the Select Committee’s investigation.
The second inconsistency also has to do with the university’s exculpatory framing of the context of the incident. The same undated (post-May 8) letter to West quoted above describes the sequence of events in a way that suggests that the assailant intervened and forcibly removed the protester after an extended period of commotion: “The ambassador was disrupted on a few occasions within a short period of time at the onset of his speech. The faculty advisor for the conference, [name redacted], got up to the microphone and read the HKS rights and responsibilities statement at least three times, and the protesters ignored him. It was at that time that one of the protesters was forcibly removed by [Harvard Graduate School of Education] student [name redacted]. Video of the confrontation can be seen at [link].” As my account makes clear, this was indeed a chaotic scene. But the chaos only began after the first protester started shouting and was removed—after just a few seconds—by the assailant. There was no build-up that could remotely justify any conclusion that there was a need to “quickly maintain order.” Ironically, the first few seconds of the video linked to in this email reveal how calm the conference was right before the first protester stood up and started shouting.
Perhaps these inconsistencies are resolved by evidence Harvard did not provide to the Committee, or that the Committee did not release to the public. But it is undeniable that, thanks to the investigation, we are in a better position to judge what happened and to ask better questions about what we know did happen. And while the disciplining of any individual student should probably be considered a private matter, the disparate punishment of the involved parties in this case—peaceful protesters and a violent assailant—is outrageous and should be aired and discussed.
At the same time, we should recognize what the investigation has not proven: transnational repression. We still do not know why the assailant took the violent action he did. Perhaps an organizer was embarrassed in front of the ambassador and did in fact direct the assailant to handle the situation. Perhaps the assailant was genuinely offended and reacted spontaneously. Or perhaps he thought such a brazen act would curry favor with a powerful Chinese diplomat. But none of the evidence establishes that the assailant was an agent of the CCP, or that certain student groups on Harvard’s campus are controlled by the Chinese state. Whatever the assailant’s motives may have been—ideological commitment, political loyalty, craven careerism, or something else—we cannot infer that he was taking orders from Beijing simply because he attempted to silence opposition to Beijing’s positions.
Nevertheless, some members of Congress have seized on the Committee’s investigation as evidence of the CCP’s malign influence on campus. Select Committee Chairman Moolenaar used the October release of the documents as an opportunity to admonish American universities “to wake up to the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on our nation’s campuses.” House Education and the Workforce Committee member Representative Elise Stefanik went further, alleging that “Harvard has proven to be completely corrupted by adversarial foreign influence” and stating: “Harvard is kowtowing to Communist China and… I will continue working to root out foreign control over our college campuses. We cannot allow American institutions of higher education to serve as tools for Communist China to carry out its transnational repression. I look forward to working with Chairman Moolenaar and Chairwoman Foxx to hold Harvard accountable and to end Communist China’s infiltration of American universities.”
By conjuring a vague cloud of CCP “influence” and “infiltration,” Congress is fueling paranoia about Chinese students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Representative Stefanik’s assertions that Harvard is “completely corrupted by adversarial foreign influence” and “kowtowing to Communist China” distract from the real problem here: Harvard failed to guarantee the right to free expression and to deter a student from violent behavior in response to a peaceful protester. There is a difference between deliberate measures by the Chinese state or its agents intended to coerce people to behave in a certain way and actions taken by ordinary people of any nationality that are intended to signal loyalty to and be seen favorably by the Chinese state and its agents. The term “influence” is particularly slippery: does it mean any kind of impact that the Chinese state has on a person’s behavior (in which case, the Committee members and I are all influenced by the Chinese state), or a deliberate influence operation (again, for which there is no evidence)?
The challenge that our society faces and will continue to face with an increasingly authoritarian, aggressive, and powerful China is how to remain vigilant against the real risk of transnational repression without exaggerating that risk or allowing it to obscure home-grown problems that can be equally serious. In light of China’s human rights record and the high-profile nature of the HKS conference, it was reasonable for the Select Committee to investigate the incident as a potential case of transnational repression. But it is irresponsible for members of Congress to continue to allege that Harvard has been “infiltrated” by the CCP when it provided no evidence to support that claim.
This rhetoric can be harmful and counterproductive. It stifles careful analysis of China’s problems, as well as those of the United States. A 2021 Carnegie Corporation-commissioned survey of China scholars in the United States found that 31.7 percent of respondents reported “increasingly polarized U.S. policy and rhetoric on China as having a direct negative effect on their work.” Such rhetoric also increases the political risk of universities that host Chinese researchers or sponsor faculty research trips to China. Especially in this era of competition and distrust between the two countries, the United States government should be promoting rather than inhibiting expertise on China. The committee ostensibly intended to support American competitiveness against China is drawing the wrong lesson from this incident.
So is Harvard. Overall, I found that the HKS Greater China Society did a good job featuring diverse perspectives on a range of issues concerning U.S.-China relations at the conference. However, as mentioned, Ambassador Xie did not take questions and departed the event promptly after his keynote address ended, before the panel discussion and Q&A session that followed. In her response to my follow-up email on May 9, in which I had also noted the ambassador’s failure to stay for Q&A Senior Associate Dean Isaacson told me: “You are correct that all speakers at HKS are expected to take questions from audience members, and we will make sure that the organizers of next year’s China Conference are reminded of that rule, that all of our student organization leaders are clear about the broader set of principles that guide freedom of expression and dissent, and that they understand the importance of adhering to those tenets.”
I do not know what the HKS administration has privately communicated to the Greater China Society or other student groups, but I doubt that its public response to this incident has ended up helping anyone understand the importance of freedom of expression and dissent. Rather than openly and explicitly affirming the necessity of questioning public figures at university events, HKS has since softened its events policy, which now states: “Working in consultation with the host, all speakers invited to HKS must allow for a meaningful opportunity for unfiltered audience questions” (emphasis added). In other words, student organizations are no longer obligated to make sure that members of the audience can question speakers.
This is a significant adjustment to the rules that makes it harder to preserve free expression and critical inquiry on campus. Students know that developing relationships with public figures is professionally important. Speaking at Harvard carries a prestige that can be extremely attractive to public figures, but it also carries some risk, given the prospect of being subject to free questioning by members of the audience. Under the old rules, the obligation to have invited speakers take questions prevented students from simply inviting powerful people to speak out of a desire for career advancement. That check on conflict of interest is now removed: students can promise an invitation to Harvard without the risk of public scrutiny, and powerful people—like government officials—can pressure students to take advantage of new laxity and persuade them to not take audience questions.
Providing a forum for skepticism and criticism of political speech is a core purpose of American universities, and allowing the audience to ask questions should be a strict requirement—not just of the speakers themselves, but of the campus groups that invite them. Ceremonial functions like commencement speeches aside, I can think of no good reason why a university should lend a platform to any sort of one-way communication.
Free inquiry and expression are the bedrock of American dynamism and resilience in the face of authoritarian threats at home and abroad. As anyone who studies China knows, the fear of punishment for openly criticizing leaders infects and weakens that country’s political system. It is a grim irony that two institutions that ought to be the clearest manifestations of American openness are compromising that value and eroding our competitiveness in the process.
Martin West declined to comment on this story. Debbie Isaacson, Brian Conroy, and a Harvard Kennedy School Greater China Society officer who organized the 2024 China Conference did not respond to a request for comment.