From Inside Higher Ed:
Mao's MOOC Rehabilitation
EdX, provider of massive open online courses (MOOcs), hosts an assortment of
offerings on Chinese history. There's The Study of Folklore from Peking
University, a look at international politics from Seoul National
University and a five-part series on everything from aristocratic
culture to neo-Confucianism from Harvard University. One course, from
China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, focuses specifically on Mao
Zedong, his philosophies and role in China’s “socialist transformation.”
That course is raising eyebrows because, despite hours of video
lectures and supplemental material in the course, students would still
have to tab over to Wikipedia to learn about the millions who died as a
result of Mao’s land reforms or that his economic initiatives led to
what may have been the greatest famine in human history, which killed
tens of millions. Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought references those
events glancingly in passing as “mistakes,” and generally heaps praise
on Mao and his philosophies. “Mao Zedong was a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary
strategist and theorist,” intones Wuzhong Feng, associate professor of
Marxist studies at Tsinghua University, in one of the course's earlier
video lectures...
Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/17/edx-mooc-courts-questions-about-censorship-and-academic-freedom
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