Universities want religious freedom. At least in China.

A recent column by Fred Hiatt in the Washington Post was entitled “China Has Silenced American Academics for Years. Now They’re Pushing Back.”

For years many American universities avoided doing or saying anything to offend Beijing out of fear of losing access to China, or worse, to the millions of dollars Chinese exchange students pay to attend these schools.

Well, as Hiatt reports, some schools are growing a spine. A group of Americans and Australians have created the “Xinjiang Initiative,” after the province in western China where Muslims are being rounded up, put in detention camps, and kept from practicing their religion.

As the statement announcing the Initiative read, “These are horrific developments that should have no place in the twenty-first century.”

It’s a welcome stand, if not a little late, for religious freedom in the Academy.

Let’s hope and pray that the Academy will take a similar stand when it comes to religious freedom on our own college campuses.

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