Tsinghua cancels history course on Cultural Revolution

A history course on China’s Cultural Revolution ( 1966- 76) at Tsinghua University has been canceled during the school’s course selection for the fall semester, a professor from the university confirmed on Thursday.

The course, Chinese Cultural History of 196676, was run by Tang Shaojie, a professor from the university’s Department of Philosophy.

Tang focuses on the study of history of Marxist philosophy and the issue of the Cultural Revolution in China. He has taught two courses featuring the Cultural Revolution in Tsinghua University. The other was The History of Cultural Revolution, according to the website of the university.

“I was informed on July 1 that the course would be canceled, and then the news was released on July 3,” Tang told the Global Times via an email.

A staff member from the education administration office of the School of Humanities of Tsinghua University told the Global Times on condition of anonymity that the course is not available for selection in the next semester, but the staff member did not know whether it will be reopened in the future.

Tang said that the course was first started in 1995 as The History of the Cultural Revolution, and his application for running the course in 2006 did not get any response.

Tang then changed the name to Chinese Cultural History of 1966- 76 and restarted the course in 2008.

Tang used a large quantity of materials including videos and audios, and combine it with his personal experience to reconstruct the history, Niu Xingzhi, a computer engineering student at Tsinghua University who attended the course in 2015, told the Global Times.

Tang played songs of the Cultural Revolution period including The East is Red, and he presented film pieces and documentaries, such as NHK’s documentaries on the Cultural Revolution and movie 1984, a British dystopian film, according to students who attended the course.

These films and other literature Tang presented in the class created an immersive experience of life some 40 years ago, Niu said.

Cultural Revolution- themed topics have been discussed in universities before. In 2015, Yu Youjun, former deputy minister of culture, delivered a lecture on the theme at Sun Yat- sen University in South China’s Guangdong Province.

Books on Cultural Revolution are widely available in China’s bookstores. The Communist Party of China said it was “10 years of catastrophe” and has vowed to keep reforming and opening up.