DEI turns coercive: How sinologist Perry Link was punished

I recently received an email: “Before I moved out of my university office in May, staff went in and took away a file cabinet as well as the computer whose hard disk held all of my data on research, teaching, and correspondence – from more than thirty years ago. When I complained about the loss of my data, my chair wrote back that ‘following the standard procedure,’ the hard disk had been completely erased. It’s quite a blow for a scholar to lose a lifetime of material. Do you think I could sue?”

This missive came from Professor Perry Link, a senior academic I deeply admire and respect as both teacher and friend, and one of the most renowned sinologists in the field today. He first visited China during the Cultural Revolution and later represented the US National Academy of Sciences in exchanges with China. Over the years, he has consistently focused on Chinese culture and politics. As an American, his influence among Chinese communities worldwide has been substantial.

This scholar, who has witnessed several of China’s political upheavals, never imagined that, in his eighties, as he prepared to retire and move out of his office this May at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) — where he had worked for many years — he would fall victim to the persecution of the radical wave of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

When I read his letter, I was outraged, because I knew this was not a matter of “standard procedure”, but a deliberate humiliation of a scholar and a calculated act of destroying thirty years of his academic materials. While universities have the authority to dispose of fixed assets, this does not mean that all the materials stored in computers or filing cabinets legally belong to the institution.

Some of the materials in question constitute a scholar’s personal intellectual property. From this perspective, the university’s actions may well be a serious violation of the law. It is almost unheard of for departing scholars to have their computer files forcibly erased by a university, and the usual practice is merely to require faculty to return fixed assets such as computers within a certain period, while giving them the time and opportunity to back up their data.

But why would the university resort to such a base tactic to persecute and humiliate a highly respected academic giant who has made outstanding contributions to both scholarship and the institution? The reason is that last year Perry Link published a widely circulated article in The Wall Street Journal titled “UC Riverside’s DEI Guardians Came After Me”, recounting the university’s earlier persecution of him. The piece triggered a public uproar.

The affair began when he, as a member of the faculty hiring committee, opposed evaluating young candidates solely by the colour of their skin rather than their actual ability. He remarked: “[Candidate X] is lively and charming — and yes, Black, which is great — but I can’t say that I found his sophistication and experience up to the level of our top candidates.” That single comment got him branded a “racist” by the university. He was removed from the hiring committee, targeted by the dean, the chancellor, and other senior administrators, and even subjected to a university-wide public denunciation, with threats of salary cuts and dismissal.

The persecution of Perry Link starkly exposes how identity politics is wielded in universities to silence dissenting voices and punish those who insist on upholding academic principles.

Replacing academic merit with the “correct identity” reminds me of the darkest moments of China’s Cultural Revolution. Back then, what mattered was whether one’s family background belonged to the “Five Black Categories” or the “Five Red Categories”. Today in America, the criterion is “skin colour”. In both cases, people are judged not by their own efforts and achievements but by the identities they are born with and cannot change.

These far-left movements all parade under the banner of “equality”, yet in practice, they generate ruthless oppression — especially against so-called “politically incorrect” thoughts and speech. For minorities, DEI policies constitute a new form of discrimination: they reduce a person to nothing more than skin colour, rather than recognising individual ability, accomplishment, and contribution. This directly contradicts Martin Luther King Jr’s appeal in his “I Have a Dream” speech: “I have a dream that one day my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Perry Link’s experience is not an isolated case. At Georgetown University, two professors were once caught in a private conversation after class. One said: “And you know what, I hate to say this, I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks. … You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom.” The other professor dared not reply but merely nodded. A student secretly recorded this exchange and reported it. The professor who spoke, though merely describing an observed phenomenon, was branded a racist and fired. The other professor, who had said nothing at all, was nevertheless disciplined.

This recalls the Cultural Revolution’s notion of the “Rightist by silence”: individuals were not only forbidden to utter “reactionary” words, but even denied the right to remain silent. Silence itself was interpreted as harbouring deep-seated hatred toward the revolution — and thus grounds for public denunciation.

Just like during the Cultural Revolution, the so-called pursuit of equality is only a slogan. The real purpose is centralisation — consolidating power. Since American universities began implementing DEI, a large number of people of mediocre academic ability but with the “correct” identity have been promoted into leadership roles. The most extreme example is former Harvard president Claudine Gay. She had published only 11 papers and was later found to have committed extensive plagiarism.

With such an academic record, she would barely qualify for an associate professorship at a normal university. Yet at Harvard — a place overflowing with talent — she rose all the way to the presidency. The reason lay in her “perfectly correct” identity: Black, female, the daughter of Haitian refugee immigrants, and a scholar of African American studies.

Riding on the wave of identity politics in recent years, she amassed sweeping power by overseeing DEI-related administrative authority, which gave her control over faculty careers. This propelled her steadily upward until she reached the presidency. Yet her shortcomings were laid bare during a congressional hearing.

When asked by lawmakers whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated school policy, she gave an evasive response. Sitting alongside her were the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, who also failed to respond directly.

The incident sparked a national uproar, exposing to the public the hypocrisy and double standards of America’s elite universities: when it comes to certain politically favoured groups, even facts cannot be spoken; but when it comes to others, even calls for genocide may not count as a violation of campus rules.

In the end, under nationwide condemnation, Penn president Liz Magill and Harvard president Gay were both forced to resign. But the DEI tide, like a warped replay of the Cultural Revolution, had already taken deep root and borne fruit across American campuses.

The harsh treatment of Perry Link at UC Riverside is part of this trend — punishment for exposing the university’s hypocrisy. California law explicitly prohibits schools from considering race in admissions and hiring. Yet to appease the DEI movement, the university knowingly broke the law.

As Hermione Granger remarks in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: “Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.” Perry Link’s “rightness” was something the university leadership could never forgive. It is like The Emperor’s New Clothes: even after the truth is exposed, the emperor and his officials must grit their teeth and continue the absurd parade.

All the more so because many administrators themselves are academic mediocrities who climbed to power through identity politics; if the standard were shifted back to merit, their very legitimacy would be called into question. Thus, the entire system devolves into a rotten mechanism of reverse selection — one that would stoop even to gangster-like tactics such as “smashing property”, humiliating and crushing Professor Link one last time as he retired.

While I hope Perry Link will pursue justice through legal means, I also understand how difficult that path would be. University administrators dare to flout the law openly because they enjoy the protection of the university’s legal office, giving them virtually unlimited resources to fight disputes.

For an individual scholar, the cost of legal action is prohibitively high, especially for a man in his eighties. Even if the university were to lose, the price would be paid by the institution and taxpayers, while the administrators themselves would emerge unscathed.

In my reply to Professor Link, I wrote: “They may be able to erase your data and attempt to humiliate you, but they can never erase your character or your lifetime of academic achievement. In the end, I believe their own malicious habits will ultimately come back to harm them. As the old Chinese saying goes 多行不义必自毙 (he who does much wrong will bring about his own destruction).” With his consent, I have decided to share this incident.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “汉学家林培瑞遭美国大学DEI迫害”.

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