主题：【文摘】Open Letter to Chinese Students at MIT (I) -- 浆糊

Therefore I conclude that those who broadcast the image without its context had malicious motives. They intended to whip up anti-Japanese hatred in order to promote a political agenda. Since John Dower has been the most sensitive of all scholars of Asia to the pain of racism, the fact that they took his work as the tool of their project is especially despicable. There is no excuse for it.

Some of the students presented demands presented at the meeting on April 26 which are simply unacceptable by the ordinary standards of American academic life. They include: removing the website on Visualizing Cultures, apologizing to the Chinese

community, canceling academic workshops scheduled as part of this research project, and revising the text and images to accord with the preferences of the students. Email messages from some MIT alumni have even called for Professors Dower and Miyagawa to be fired. In order to calm the situation, the MIT administration and Professors Dower and Shigeru have conceded some of these demands, while insisting on their own integrity. I respect their decision, but let me explain why, even though I understand your anger, I find these demands unacceptable.

MIT hires to its faculty only scholars of the highest caliber. When I was the head of the History Faculty, we hired John Dower after a national search indicated that he was the most outstanding scholar of Japanese history in the country. He has won many prizes to confirm that judgment. No one I know is more deeply committed to the empathetic understanding of the peoples of Asia than John Dower. Professor Miyagawa deserves equal respect.

You, despite your passion, are not specialists in East Asian history. Like any field in the sciences or engineering, historical study requires intensive concentration, acquisition of essential research skills, careful study of documents, and thoughtful, clear, writing. Those of you who think that you know the history of East Asian better than these distinguished scholars lack the authority to make this claim. No one so far has presented any evidence that the materials presented on the Visualizing Cultures are mistaken or biased. It is disrespectful of the dedication of serious scholars to make such emotional charges based on no evidence.

Contrary to the accusations of the protesters, the materials on “Visualizing Cultures” do not glorify Japanese imperialism. The visual images and the textual explanation describe and analyze the power of Japanese propaganda about the war. But to describe is not to condone. The text by John Dower makes it very clear that these images are shocking, racist, and sadistic. They did, however, have a powerful impact on the Japanese public at the time. We cannot ignore their power, but we must explain it. Suppression will not help us to understand them.

The American university is based on the fundamental principle of academic freedom. Scholars must be allowed to engage in whatever research activities they find most challenging in their professional fields. Their work is subject to the judgment of their peers in their discipline, and they must respond to careful, reasoned criticism from professional colleagues. Scholars also engage in open dialogue with students and the general public in order to promote public awareness of their research. But ultimately, no one can tell them what to study, or demand that their work be suppressed.

The Sino-Japanese war indeed raises many crucial issues about East Asian history, and I would encourage you to explore them further. Consider the following paradox, for example: after its defeat by Japan, the Qing government of China sent thousands of Chinese students to Japan for advanced study, to the very country that had committed atrocities against it. In fact, the Qing began the foreign study program that has brought you students to the U.S. today. Why did it do so? Because the Qing rulers realized that China was backward and weak in the face of Western imperialism, and Japan had mastered crucial aspects of industrial production, military organization, and technological skill. Japan was much less alien to the Chinese than were the United States and Europe. Japan had borrowed the Chinese writing system for its own language, and both countries shared the common cultural heritages of Confucianism and Buddhism. The Chinese students in Japan picked up many of the key concepts of Western industrial nations through Japanese. Many of the most common Chinese modern political terms, like “minzhuzhuyi,” (democracy), come from Japanese (minshushugi). But Japan had created the term “minshu” from the classical Chinese terms for “people” (min) and “master (zhu).” This is just one illustration to show that the Chinese and Japanese peoples have been closely tied to each other for many centuries. The history of their relations cannot be reduced simply to a story of atrocities. To do so violates the historian’s responsibility to describe the entire truth of a complex relationship as best she can.