Confucius Institutes, funded in part by a Chinese government agency, have stirred some controversy in the academic community. Some worry that the center's affiliation with the Chinese government will limit what can be discussed.
Yesterday, Widener president James T. Harris III signed a five-year agreement to open the institute on the Chester campus. University officials declined to provide a copy of the contract because it will not be final until November.
"There is absolutely no language in the contract that would limit free speech or restrict the institution in its programming from discussing any particular issue," said Dan Hanson, director of public relations at Widener. "If it did, we probably wouldn't have considered it."
There are more than 300 Confucius Institutes worldwide, including 55 in the United States, said Yong Zhao, director of an institute affiliated with Michigan State University. The Office of Chinese Language Council International, also known as Hanban, has spent about $73 million in the last four years to launch and operate the centers, according to the South China Morning Post.
Some foreign-policy observers see the institutes as a way for China to soften its image abroad.
While countries such as Germany, France, and Spain have also built cultural centers in the United States, they operate independently. Confucius Institutes are affiliated and partially funded by universities.
Professor Jacques de Lisle, a specialist in Chinese law and politics at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and director of the university's Center for East Asian Studies, did not want to comment on the specifics of the Widener center. In general, some American academics are concerned about the institutes "because of China's pattern of using cultural elements for political purposes," he said.
But directors of Confucius Institutes interviewed yesterday said they're free to talk about whatever they want.
Pennsylvania's first Confucius Institute, which opened at the University of Pittsburgh in 2007, recently helped fund a symposium about pollution and the effects rapid industrialization have had on China's environment, said Michele Heryford, the managing director.
"That's a touchy subject to them, but they didn't write to me and say, 'Excuse me. You're not allowed to talk about this,' " Heryford said.
Asked about the center's contract, she said it originally contained a clause prohibiting the center from discussing anything "offensive to the Chinese government." The college asked that it be removed.
Chinese cultural programs are sometimes met with paranoia in the Western world, several institute directors said. A Canadian lawyer went so far as to call the institutes "a vehicle for infiltration and spying into the campuses to find out what's going on hostile to their interest," according to an April 2008 article in the Vancouver Sun.
"That's just silly," said Zhao, who runs the Michigan State institute. "Sometimes people can go really crazy. That's precisely the reason that people need to know about China."
The institutes may not be restricted from discussing human-rights abuses or other controversial topics in China, but that doesn't mean they'll make the agenda.
"I don't think you always have to get into the controversies," said Ching-I Tu, director of the Confucius Institute at Rutgers University. "There are plenty of good things about China to talk about."
Jo Allen, senior vice president and provost at Widener, said the goal of the new center was to teach the Chinese Mandarin language to whoever wants to learn it and help people who may travel to China better understand the country and its people.
"None of us has a crystal-clear past," she said yesterday. "It's really not about politics. It's more about the cultural exchange."
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