Yale University is focused more on helping poor people in China than in its own town of New Haven, according to a recent essay.
“Yale is not only divorced from rural America, but is politically homogeneous and economically segregated from its surrounding community,” Ian Oxnevad wrote for the National Association of Scholars.
The New Haven, Connecticut private university reflects the distrust Americans have toward the educational elites, Oxnevad wrote, citing several polls.
“Yale University’s approach to ‘rural China’ and ‘rural America’ not only confirm these findings, but illustrate how this disregard for Americans among education’s elite differs from the elite’s commitment to developing China,” he wrote.
While the Ivy League university has a few programs to help it recruit rural students, its investments in China are much greater.
Oxnevad wrote:
Yale’s interest in bridging divides in America is laudable, but awkward given these statistics. This awkwardness is amplified by the university’s avid commitment to developing China’s Hunan province, and its cooperation with Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. The Yale-China program works in China’s Hunan Province to assist in providing medical education and “address some of the greatest needs in education and healthcare inequity.” The program notes that its host city of Changsha is Mao Zedong’s hometown and “part of China’s progress into the future.”
The Yale-China program offers a number of fellowships to assist in training Chinese medical professionals at Yale, and in bringing medical training to rural Chinese citizens within China. The program notes that its health initiatives reinforce China’s efforts to “alleviate poverty through health,” and assist China in combating mental illness, hypertension, and diabetes.
The university failed to disclose $375 million in donations from Chinese companies, Oxnevad wrote. He said Yale’s partnerships in China are “alarming for national security reasons” and explained why. He reiterated his call for the university to focus more on American communities in need.
“If polls that show decreasing trust in academia are any indication, Yale still has a lot of outreach to do at home.”
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