Bureaucrats at Kean University, a taxpayer-funded school in the endless sprawl of New Jersey, are currently seeking to hire staffers for a satellite campus in China.
“Membership in Chinese Communist Party is preferred,” Kean’s job advertisement for the position of “specialist for residence life” explains, according to Inside Higher Ed.
In a separate posting for a “specialist for student conduct,” the American public school declares that Communist party affiliation is similarly highly desirable.
Both job advertisements are in English and both are currently on the website for Wenzhou-Kean University.
Wenzhou-Kean University is a “dual degree-granting, English-speaking,” Chinese-American institution “jointly established” by Kean University and Wenzhou University. The latter school, located in in the province of Zhejiang, is funded by the People’s Republic of China.
The precursor to Wenzhou University was Wenzhou Normal College. It was established in 1956, seven years after Communist dictator Mao Zedong came to power.
The standard staff application for employment at the school funded by Communist China and the taxpayers of New Jersey asks job seekers for much information including birthplace, “politics status” and, of course, height.
Officials from Kean U. have placed the blame for the Communist Party preference and the discriminatory questions on the school’s Chinese partners. Wenzhou University hires administrators, Kean officials say, while the American college hires faculty members.
The Council of New Jersey State College Locals, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, first complained about the taxpayer-funded school’s search for Communist employees.
Steve Young, the union’s executive director, noted that the “specialist for residence life” and the “specialist for student conduct” will both work closely with students and could operate like Communist Party commissars who ensure that students do not attempt to deviate from the yoke of China’s dominant Communist Party.
“How much control does China really have over this deal?” Young asked, according to Inside Higher Ed. He has called on New Jersey lawmakers to investigate Kean’s Wenzhou campus.
In addition to its desire to hire Chinese Communist Party members, Kean University is also famous for purchasing a $219,000 table — made in China. (RELATED: Obscure State College’s Eternal Claim To Fame Will Now Be Its $219,000 Chinese TABLE)
Back in December, in the face of considerable criticism, Kean president Philip Connelly hailed the table, calling it no ordinary table but a sort of bionic, multimedia conference table.
The “piece of high-tech equipment” features an “intelligent conferencing system” that will allow students in New Jersey to “have regularly scheduled meetings with student leaders at Kean Ocean and Wenzhou Kean University in China,” Connelly wrote in an email obtained by NJ.com.
The circular piece of furniture costing over four times the median American household income is part of a bold strategic plan intended to transform the little-known college that U.S. News ranks so low it doesn’t bother printing the ranking.
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