Online Screening and Discussion: “In the Name of Confucius”

In the Name of Confucius is the first documentary film exposing the growing global controversies surrounding the Chinese government’s multi-billion dollar Confucius Institute (CI), a Chinese language program attaching to over 1,600 foreign universities and schools around the world.

Featuring the exclusive personal story of a former CI teacher, Sonia Zhao, whose defection and complaint let to the first closure of a CI on a North American campus, and the unprecedented outcry against Canada’s largest school board, the TDSB, over its plan to open the world’s largest CI, the film examines the risks that the Confucius Institutes could pose to our society—a loss of academic integrity, violations to human rights codes, foreign influence, and even potential infringements on national security.

The film will be followed by a Q&A session with panelists Doris Liu (film director), Rachelle Peterson (Director of Policy at the National Association of Scholars), Prof. Perry Link (renowned sinologist and Chancellorial Chair Professor at the University of California at Riverside), and Rory O’Connor (President of The Athenai Institute).