Introduction

After twenty-one years, I can now look back on the troubles that started in July of 2000 with a detached and even slightly amused perspective. Of course, the tale that I am going to tell involves a series of odd coincidences and unusual events that occurred during discussions with people in Asia and the United States in 2000 about the future of education, discussions that unexpectedly propelled me forward to the geopolitical frontline in a manner that set me on course toward confrontations I had never intended.

I have come to believe that some sort of confrontation was inevitable in my career, granted certain characteristics of my personality. At the same time, I feel that I can easily prove the profound illegality, and immorality, of the actions taken against me, and the shameful participation in that process by colleagues, friends, and family.

I had an odd way of looking at my career. I was interested in changing entire systems, not in making progressive modifications to existing institutions, and I did so as someone who likes processes, and who makes friends easily with bureaucrats and administrators. I was also not all that interested in my own career, or my own pay. I assumed that I would be taken care of if the larger mission were successful.

My underlying message was radical change, yet at the same time, change with a respect for the work that the people around me did. That approach meant that I was not easily dismissed as a fanatic or a dreamer, and at the same time, intriguing and exciting to many who longed for real institutional change. In other words, I was in a position to actually change things in a sleepy and hidebound institution like the University of Illinois.

     There was something fundamentally wrong with how I approached my career in the year 2000. I wanted to do something different. I had no desire toaim for a particular career goal or strive to reach a particularly lofty position. I didn’t even desire to get in with the most powerful people at the University of Illinois. Instead, I had a dream to create something unique in a rather ordinary, but quite powerfuluniversity. This approach alone was enough to make me a serious threat—although it would take six months for me to figure out what had happened.

One morning in 2000, I sat down at my desk in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and started drafting out a proposal for the future of the university in the age of the internet. The world became a tidal pool full of possibilities in my head. Starting with my neck of the woods, Asian studies, I set down a long-term plan for fixing the educational system of our country. I suggested new rules, new cultural standards, and even new approaches to international relations as part of this proposal. My concept of the future of the university was broad, but the description of the potential of distance learning was compelling, and I was able to communicate it easily to others.

Although money and credit never came to me for that proposal, I found that the po