Chen Hongguo was a newsmaker three years ago, when he published a statement about his resignation as a law professor at Northwest University of Politics and Law in Xian, citing unbearable intrusion of academic freedom.
It was the same year when the party significantly tightened its ideological grip on universities on the mainland, explicitly warning professors against talking of press freedom, constitutional democracy, among other Western concepts in class.
“I have to revive the old me, a me that doesn’t kneel down,” Chen said in a statement as he turned his back on academe where he had spent his adult life.
Chen was not alone in quitting his teaching job that year: others included Beijing-based economics professor Xia Yeliang, and Shanghai-based law professor Zhang Xuezhong, both outspoken scholars considered liberals by many.
Yet Chen was among the very few that keep pursuing his dream as an educator on the mainland, as he opened an art and culture space last August, whose name undermined what some of Chen friend desribed as his awe for knowledge.
Chen said Igwise can either mean “ignorant wisdom” – from the phrase attributed to Socrates: “I know that I know nothing” – or “ignite wisdom”, which he said he has been trying to do all his life.
