Universities in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom are among the organizations whose officers will not be imprisoned or shot if they let somebody say bad things about the People’s Republic of China. We are not at that stage yet.
Nevertheless, early this year “a professor from Sheffield Hallam University was told to stop research into human rights abuses following pressure from China.” The school may be starting to regret its action (The Boar, December 20, 2025).
In February 2025, Laura Murphy [shown above], one of the most well-known professors at the university, was ordered to cease her research project on forced labour and supply chains in China.
Her research project concentrated on the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group originating in Central Asia who have faced systematic persecution from the Chinese government since 2016. This includes detention in labour camps and prisons, where instances of torture and mistreatment have been reported….
Murphy, whose project had previously been described as “groundbreaking” by the university, was told to stop her work, while the website for the Forced Labour Lab, her team of researchers at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice (HKC), was taken down.
However, while HKC’s work was removed by the university, several of its reports remain accessible within the university archives.
In October 2025, Sheffield Hallam University said that it was lifting the ban on Murphy’s research into forced labour and issued a public apology to her and her team….
Speaking after the lifting of the ban, Murphy told The Guardian: “I’m unclear at this point whether the university is prepared to be as supportive as it used to be.”
In explanation of what happened in February, a spokesman for the school mumbles something about the “complex set of circumstances at the time, including being unable to secure the necessary professional indemnity insurance.”
Indemnity against what? An invasion of the campus by the People’s Liberation Army?
It’s all very complicated. Except that back in February, Professor Murphy was able to find out, so she thought, that the university was “explicitly trading my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market.”
The school denies this motive.
Anyway, there has been an apology, the rep says: “We have apologised to Professor Murphy and wish to make clear our commitment to supporting her research and to securing and promoting freedom of speech and academic freedom within the law.”
People need not be in immediate or even medium-term danger from great evil in order to indulge an impulse to appease that evil. They aren’t necessarily motivated by fear either, except perhaps fear of losing a source of cash. Some people, just to make life easier, do whatever the persons screaming at them the loudest want them to do. And we all know that officials of the Chinese Communist Party are skilled, or let’s say trained, in the art of verbal belligerence.
Also see:
The Guardian: “UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China” (November 3, 2025)
StoptheCCP.org: “On Courage: Our Ultimate Weapon Against the Chinese Communist Party”
