Columbia University is hosting Vietnam’s Communist leader To Lam this week for “a conversation” and “moderated question and answer session” in just the latest instance of leftist-dominated higher education platforming and elevating voices that run opposite to American freedom while treating conservative, free market leaders and students as less than equal.
The event is co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute which also administers a Master of Arts in Regional Studies program at Columbia, telling you everything you need to know about the commie-glorifying curriculum force-fed to students. The Institute recently observed the 75th anniversary of its founding with a gala featuring climate alarmist and failed presidential candidate John Kerry, who jetted around the globe as President Joe Biden’s “Climate Envoy” while lecturing Americans they must abandon gas-powered vehicles, air conditioning, and U.S. energy independence.
To Lam’s Monday morning event with Columbia betrays the supposedly elite university’s lack of concern for human rights, societal flourishing, and the principles that allow liberalized democracies to succeed. In a letter to Columbia University’s interim president Dr. Katrina Armstrong, U.S. Rep. Michelle Steel laid out the “serious concern” raised by the school’s decision to promote To Lam.
“Since Lam assumed the role of General Secretary, the Communist Party of Vietnam has doubled down in adopting the Chinese Communist Party model of repression,” Steel’s letter explained of the “individual who is chiefly responsible for the ongoing repression of the Vietnamese people.”
The Cold War may have ended with freedom’s triumph over the Soviet Union, but communist leaders and their failed ideas continue to inexplicably and shamefully be propped up by American academics who ought to know better.
More from Rep. Steel’s letter on the communist regime leader being glorified by Columbia:
“Prisoners of conscience in Vietnam face lengthy prison sentences, endure solitary confinement, face unfair trials, and are arbitrarily detained by the one-party police state. In addition, Vietnamese prisoners of conscience are unable to seek care for their health conditions, subjected to forced labor, and banned by prison authorities [from] religious practices, such as prayer. Some have succumbed to unspecified medical issues and have died while serving life sentences.
Just this week, Vietnam’s Hanoi People’s Court sentenced Phan Van Bach, an independent journalist and prominent activist, for “distributing anti-state propaganda” after voicing his concerns about the Communist Party of Vietnam on Facebook and YouTube. While in custody, Mr. Bach’s health has seriously deteriorated according to his wife and attorney.
Additionally, noodle vendor Buy Tuan Lam was jailed for the same “anti-state propaganda” charges last year after posting 19 videos on Facebook and 25 on YouTube that “affected the confidence of the people in the leadership of the state,” according to the indictment. Days prior, footage surfaced of then-Vietnam Minister of Public Security To Lam eating a $2,000 steak after he visited the grave of Karl Marx.”
Rep. Steel rightly noted in her letter to Columbia that elevating someone like To Lam is “yet another example” of the school’s “lack of moral clarity” and, as such, the institution of supposedly higher learning “cannot claim to foster a campus environment of free speech and expression while hosting one of the most prominent leaders of authoritarianism.”
This is hardly Columbia University’s first time showing its adoration for despots — during the 2007-2008 academic year, the school invited and subsequently hosted then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
