When Lu Xuesong was dismissed from her position as a teacher of Chinese cinema at an arts college in Jilin province in May, she was so angered at the school’s refusal to say why that she posted a plea on the internet. All her materials, she said, had been approved by the authorities.
“If there exist unwritten rules that caused me to be treated unfairly and unjustly, then I have to follow my conscience to complain and protest to defend the truth,” she wrote in an open letter posted on the internet.
Her plea struck a chord, especially with liberal academics fretting over whether they, too, could be dismissed because of something they might have said in front of students.