Different schools have vastly different approaches to individual Chinese who are struggling with their government over human rights issues.

For example, we covered the story of New York University selling out a Chinese dissident over a lucrative deal with China.

In contrast, over one hundred Wellesley faculty members just signed a letter saying that if Peking University fires a professor for his political views, they’ll urge the college to reconsider its partnership with Peking.

More than 130 faculty members at Wellesley College have signed an open letter saying that they will urge the college to reconsider its institutional partnership with Peking University if a professor of economics there is fired for his outspoken advocacy of democracy and individual freedom. Peking University’s School of Economics is expected to hold a vote on the ouster of Xia Yeliang this month for reasons, as the Wellesley letter states, “based solely on his political and philosophical views.”

“We believe that dismissing Prof. Xia for political reasons is such a fundamental violation of academic freedom that we, as individuals, would find it very difficult to engage in scholarly exchanges with Peking University,” says the letter, which is addressed to Peking University administrators. “If he is dismissed, we will encourage Wellesley College to reconsider our institutional partnership.” In June, Wellesley signed a memorandum of understanding with Peking to include faculty and student exchanges, joint research and virtual collaborations.

The letter from Wellesley faculty is not the first instance of a faculty banding together to voice concerns about academic freedom raised by an overseas partnership — though it could prove to be the first case of a faculty derailing one. Faculty members at Yale University, which just opened a liberal arts college jointly with the National University of Singapore, approved a resolution expressing concern about Singapore’s poor record on civil and political rights, and Duke University’s Academic Council compelled the university administration to scale back its plansfor a campus in China after raising a variety of concerns about the venture, academic freedom among them.

The case at Wellesley is different, however, in that it does not involve a broad statement about principles of academic or other freedoms but rather is a response to a single, specific case.

“The line just got crossed,” said Susan M. Reverby, the Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and a professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley. “This is a pure and absolute example of the failure of academic freedom. Then the question becomes what’s our position as the partner here? What’s our moral position?”

The partnership between Peking and Wellesley makes Xia “our colleague,” said Thomas Cushman, the Deffenbaugh de Hoyos Carlson Professor in the Social Sciences and a professor of sociology at Wellesley. “We need to protect him. It’s almost a duty.”