Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese activist and dissident who was threatened by the Chinese government and has sought U.S. help, has been offered a place at New York University. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is negotiating his release from Chinese custody, according to The New York Times:
Mr. Chen, a blind lawyer who earned a global reputation by exposing abuses of China’s one-child population control policy, overshadowed an annual meeting of high-level Chinese and American officials when he escaped from house arrest last month and fled to Beijing, winning refuge in the United States Embassy here.
An agreement by American and Chinese officials to end Mr. Chen’s house arrest and send him to a Chinese law school imploded on Wednesday after both Mr. Chen and human-rights activists said Chinese officials could not be trusted to honor its terms. But by that time, Mr. Chen had been moved to a Beijing hospital for treatment of a foot injury, and was suddenly beyond the reach of American diplomatic protection.
Amid the diplomatic fracas, both the Americans and their Chinese hosts acted publicly on Friday as though nothing were amiss. Meeting with President Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People, Mrs. Clinton said she believed that “the China-U.S. relationship is stronger than it’s ever been.”
As she spoke, the parties in the dispute were issuing statements aimed at removing Mr. Chen’s status as a source of diplomatic friction.
The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned that NYU has not publicly confirmed the offer to Chen:
NYU has not confirmed that it offered the fellowship. But Mr. Chen, in a statement issued on Friday through a friend, said he had been invited to attend the university. He did not plan to seek political asylum, he said, but hoped “to go to the United States and rest for several months.”
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