Letter from 63 Harvard Faculty Members to Hu Jintao

Harvard Faculty

President Hu Jintao
c/o Embassy of the People’s Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave, NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Dear President Hu:

We are writing as faculty of Harvard University to bring to your attention again to the case of Dr. Yang Jianli, one of our graduates and a legal permanent resident of the United States. Dr.Yang has been detained in China since April 26, 2002. On behalf of his wife, who is an employee of Harvard Medical School and their two young children Aaron and Anita, we write to convey our strong hope that your Government will respond favorably to a petition to grant him parole. He will be eligible for parole according to the laws of China on October 26, 2004.

Dr. Yang is an accomplished scholar who lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. In addition to having received his Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University, he was involved in ongoing research with our faculty, focusing on formal models of voting systems and efficient mechanisms for income transfer.

Last December, we were pleased to be able to welcome Premier Wen Jiabao to our campus for a mutual exchange of views. It was a very productive and engaging conversation. At that time, over 100 Harvard faculty wrote to Premier Wen to express their concerns about Dr. Yang’s detention.

We were subsequently disappointed by the verdict in his case a number of months later because we do not believe that it accurately reflects Dr. Yang’s intentions, motives or character. And we were troubled by his sentence because we hoped your justice system would exhibit a humanitarian impulse that would permit Yang Jianli to be immediately reunited with his family after already having spent considerable time in jail prior to trial.

Harvard University enjoys deep, longstanding, and important ties with the People’s Republic of China, and would hope to expand those ties in the future. Many of our most promising students have come from China. None of us want Dr. Yang’s ongoing detention to interfere with our strong partnership. It is with this in mind, we hope that Yang Jianli’s parole will be granted when he becomes eligible this month. We believe a decision to grant Yang Jianli parole would both show a commitment to justice within your country’s legal system, and help to strengthen the bilateral ties between China and the United States.

Thank you for taking the time to address this important matter.

Respectfully,

Harvard University Faculty

John F. Kennedy School of Government Faculty

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
The Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations
Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

Richard Zeckhauser
Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy

Jeffrey Frankel
James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Economic Growth

William W. Hogan
Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Public Policy and Administration

Michael Ignatieff
Professor of the Practice of Human Rights

David King
Associate Professor of Public Policy

L. Jean Camp
Associate Professor of Public Policy

Carol A. Chetkovich
Associate Professor of Public Policy

Susan Dynarski
Assistant Professor

Christopher Avery
Professor of Public Policy

Sarah Sewall
Adjunct Lecturer, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

Cary Coglianese
Associate Professor of Public Policy, Chair of the Regulatory Policy Program

Linda Bilmes
Lecturer in Public Policy

Robert D. Putnam
Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy

George J. Borjas
Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy

John Donahue
Raymond Vernon Lecturer in Public Policy

Ricardo Hausmann
Professor of the Practice of Economic Development

Erzo Luttmer
Assistant Professor of Public Policy

Kenneth Winston
Lecturer in Ethics

David M. Lazer
Associate Professor of Public Policy

Ambassador Swanee Hunt
Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy
Director, Women and Public Policy Program

Arthur I. Applbaum
Professor of Ethics and Public Policy
Acting Director, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University

Alan Altshuler
Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor in Urban Policy and Planning

Samantha Power
Lecturer in Public Policy

Marshall Ganz
Lecturer in Public Policy

Francis M. Bator
Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy Emeritus

William C. Clark
Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development

Christopher Jencks
Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy

Robert Stavins
Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government

Hannah Riley Bowles
Assistant Professor of Public Policy

Harvard Law School Faculty

Lucian Bebchuk
Friedman Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance

Christine Desan
Professor of Law

Richard Parker
Paul W. Williams Professor of Political Justice

Andrew L. Kaufman
Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law

David L. Shapiro
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law

Carol Steiker
Associate Dean of the Law School Professor of Law

Betsy Baker
Lecturer on Law
Assistant Dean for the Graduate Program

David Kennedy
Henry Shattuck Professor of Law

J. Mark Ramseyer
Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies

Guhan Subramanian
Joseph Flom Assistant Professor of Law and Business

Jon Hanson
Professor of Law

Robert H. Mnookin
Williston Professor of Law

Joseph William Singer
Professor of Law

Henry Steiner
Professor of Law

William W. Fisher III
Hale and Dorr Professor of Intellectual Property Law

Frank I. Michelman
Robert Walmsley University Professor

Paul Weiler
Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law

Jonathan Zittrain
Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Assistant Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies

Medical Area Faculty

John Z. Ayanian
Associate Professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy

Alisa B. Busch
Instructor in Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry

Lisa Muto
Director of Administration
Department of Health Care Policy

Richard Urman
Clinical Fellow, Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care

Nancy Keating
Instructor in Health Care Policy
Instructor in Medicine

Ellen Meara
Assistant Professor of Health Economics

Thomas G. McGuire
Professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Care Policy

Meredith Rosenthal
Assistant Professor of Health Economics and Policy ,Department of Health Policy and Management

Alan Zaslavsky
Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy

Other Harvard Faculty

Laurence H. Tribe
Carl M. Loeb University Professor

Donald Fanger
Professor Emeritus

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