China’s education minister is banning textbooks “promoting Western values” or criticizing the Communist Party of China (CCP). He was quoted in a Chinese newspaper as forbidding “remarks that slander the leadership” of the CCP or “smear socialism.”

My first reaction is to wonder what effect this will have on American satellite campuses like Duke Kunshan University, but is this authoritarian decree really out of line with the values of our fine American institutions? One need only see the latest story out of Clemson University to see how respect for free speech is as far gone from our universities as it is in theirs.

Even if Duke is nothing like Clemson and still values open inquiry and academic freedom, and would resist tyrannical Chinese decrees, it could fall victim to soft intimidation, as NC State appears to have done when it disinvited the Dalai Lama in 2009.