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from the chair of the American Bar Association Human Rights Ad-
visory Council. 
That law school is part of a government-supported effort inside 
China to experiment with new approaches to higher education, and 
so is NYU Shanghai, which began teaching in 2013. NYU Shanghai 
is a degree-granting campus of New York University, whose work 
must be accredited by both the Middle States Commission on High-
er Education in Philadelphia and China’s Ministry of Education in 
Beijing. 
The trustees of New York University award degrees to its grad-
uates. Therefore, NYU agreed to participate, on the condition that 
it would operate under principles of academic freedom. NYU has 
exclusive and final responsibility over faculty appointments, stu-
dent admissions, curricula, academic policies and procedures, et 
cetera. 
Half of NYU Shanghai’s undergraduates come from China, and 
half come from the rest of the world. 
NYU Shanghai delivers an undergraduate liberal education in 
the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, promoting the 
skills of critical and creative thinking. All of our undergraduate 
students pursue a core curriculum in Shanghai for 2 years and 
then spend their junior year studying at other campuses within 
NYU’s network, which now spans 14 cities around the world. And 
then they return to Shanghai to complete their degrees. 
We at NYU choose the faculty who teach our courses, and I am 
proud to say that we have recruited a remarkable group of stars 
who do not diminish the brand and who are listed in Appendix 1 
to my written testimony. 
Financially, NYU does not profit from its activities in Shanghai. 
NYU Shanghai sits as a tub on its own bottom. So why, you might 
ask, has NYU taken this on? Two reasons stand out. 
First, NYU Shanghai advances NYU’s bold redefinition of how a 
university can be structured. In the 21st century, the phenomena 
of globalization and modern information and communications tech-
nologies have created new challenges and new opportunities for hu-
manity. In order to more effectively fulfill its academic mission, 
NYU expanded to become a global network of campuses and aca-
demic centers in important cities. Students can enter NYU through 
the degree-granting campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and 
Shanghai, and they can study away in 11 other cities. 
Shanghai is a superb location for NYU to have established a de-
gree-granting campus. China is an extraordinarily important and 
rapidly changing country, and Shanghai is New York’s natural 
counterpart. 
Second, NYU Shanghai provides NYU with an essential oppor-
tunity to reflect deeply about what knowledge, skills, and virtues 
this generation of students requires in order to lead lives of satis-
faction and contribution. NYU Shanghai is a place where NYU can 
experiment with new ways of developing those qualities. 
For example, because it is so important today that each of us 
know how to see the world through the eyes of others, NYU Shang-
hai requires every student to live with a roommate from another 
country. 
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I personally teach the course that all students are required to 
take during freshman year, an intellectual history course which I 
teach using the Socratic method, in which students engage a set of 
great books by authors such Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John 
Locke, Adam Smith, and Friedrich Hayek. These are the same 
readings I would use if I were teaching the course in New York, 
and I included syllabi from the course as Appendix 2 to my written 
testimony. 
NYU Shanghai is a pioneering university, and we receive dozens 
of visitors to our campus every week. We would be delighted if any 
members of this subcommittee or their staffs would come to visit 
us. 
People who have not visited us in person occasionally suggest 
that NYU Shanghai should not exist. Sometimes they argue that 
American universities should stay away from any authoritarian 
country. Sometimes they say that China presents unique risks that 
render academic freedom impossible. While I appreciate the good 
motives of these individuals who speculate about our university 
from afar, I do not believe their conclusions are well-founded. 
First of all, the benefits of engagement are enormous. Our uni-
versities in America nuture skills and values that we believe are 
important to their wellbeing as individuals and to their societies. 
We are all better off if Chinese students, American students, and 
students from around the world have the chance to study at insti-
tutions like ours. And we would all be better off if countries all 
around the world developed institutions like ours that could pro-
vide those benefits to large numbers of their citizens. 
China is in the middle of a period of astonishing change. Within 
Chinese society, there is heated debate about what direction 
change should take over the next two decades and about what 
goals should take precedence over others. This debate is more like-
ly to go well if the participants can point to the positive impact of 
schools like NYU Shanghai on Chinese students. 
The challenge of engagement in foreign lands is real, but it does 
not come close to offsetting those benefits. American universities 
themselves grew and prospered in a flawed country with serious 
human rights problems like slavery, but our universities have been 
durable institutions and have made important contributions to 
America’s progress. 
To be sure, we have to be vigilant. A university such as ours can-
not function if students and faculty are not free to ask questions 
and to entertain arguments that might be disruptive and even of-
fensive to others. Norms of civility may be imposed, but they must 
not cut off genuine and rigorous inquiry. If it would become impos-
sible to operate with academic freedom, NYU would close down its 
Shanghai campus. 
Last weekend, I told a Shanghainese friend that I would be testi-
fying here today. He asked why, and I explained that some people 
who value the free exchange of ideas believe American universities 
should not be present in China. His response was crisp and, I be-
lieve, quite apt. He said, ‘‘If someone is truly committed to the free 
exchange of ideas here in China, they should want to see more 
schools like NYU Shanghai, not fewer.’’
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