Yale Professor Couple Under Fire for Attending Chinese Conference, Guided Tour in Brutally Repressed Xinjiang Region: Prof Praised China for ‘Respect for Minority People’

Two Yale faculty members are facing scrutiny for traveling to an "academic forum" in China's far-flung Xinjiang region, where China has been accused of rampant human rights abuses against the ethnic Uyghurs, including locking them up en masse in re-education camps. The forum's organizers and accompanying tour included institutions linked to a Communist Party "paramilitary organization sanctioned by the U.S. government," according to a new investigation by the intelligence firm Strategy Risks.

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, the husband and wife co-directors of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE), traveled to the historic Silk Road city of Kashghar, in the so-called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, to attend the International Forum on the History and Future of Xinjiang, or HFX. The academic forum brought together more than 100 Chinese and foreign experts to discuss the region, which has been under Chinese control for centuries but whose population is majority Muslim and not ethnically Chinese. In recent decades, China has ruthlessly cracked down on the Uyghurs to widespread international condemnation.

During their visit, Tucker and Grim—an elderly couple whose work focuses on "the engaged moral force of religious environmentalism"—were taken on a tour of ancient Kashgar's remarkable historic and archaeological sites, now under tight Chinese control. Following the conference, the English-language edition of the government-controlled China Daily published an article entitled, "Minority groups respected in autonomous region." The piece denied any wrongdoing by China in Xinjiang and compared the Uyghurs to Native Americans in the United States.

Tucker was quoted saying that, "What is exciting in Xinjiang is the respect for minority people. Clearly, the music, dance and culture have been well-preserved here in Xinjiang."

It is not clear who paid for the trip. The university and the scholars did not return a request for comment.

One of HFX's cohosts, Strategy Risks found, is Kashgar University, which maintains ties to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary organization subordinate to the CCP that was sanctioned by the United States in 2020 for its connection to serious human-rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Following the trip, "in extensive interviews with Chinese state media, and on Yale's website, the two Yale scholars praised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s policies in Xinjiang," Strategy Risks found through open-source information and contemporaneous reports in the heavily censored Chinese media.

While some details of the trip have been previously published in Chinese academic and propaganda spaces online, Strategy Risks' Thursday report—"How Yale Scholars Helped China Promote Its Xinjiang Narrative"—marks the first time it is being exposed in the English-speaking world. The report argues that "participation in such forums can create reputational risks for scholars and their institutions, when their statements are subsequently used to support policies criticized by the U.S. government, human rights organizations, and the United Nations."

Yale's relationship with China dates back more than 170 years, when Yung Wing became the first Chinese citizen to graduate from an American university in 1854, and Yale has long boasted some of the leading China scholars in the West. In recent decades, Yale has doubled down on China, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in donations and grant money from Chinese individuals, universities, companies, government entities, and other Chinese institutions.

The university's work with China now encompasses "academic exchanges, research partnerships, medical and educational programs, and a substantial Chinese student population." During the fall 2024 academic year, Yale had 3,913 international students, with Chinese nationals leading the pack. Yale Law School's China Center notably received a $30 million gift in 2016 from Joseph Tsai, founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, which was designated as a "Chinese military company" by the Department of War in June of this year. The center, based on the ultra-prestigious law school's New Haven campus, renamed itself for Tsai.

Yale professors Tucker and Grim jointly run the school's FORE program, established in 1998 to study religion as a means to "inspire people to preserve, protect, and restore the Earth community." This work, Strategy Risks wrote, "brought them into longstanding engagement with China." Tucker, for instance, said in a 2025 interview that she identifies with China "in a very deep way," while the pair have described themselves as "citizen diplomats" hoping to encourage deeper ties between China and the United States.

Both Tucker and Grim also maintain a relationship with Pan Yue, who served at the time of the 2024 trip as deputy head of China's United Front Work Department, a Communist Party organ that was sanctioned by the United States in 2020 for spreading the CCP's propaganda and bullying those who oppose Beijing's narrative. The professors originally met with Pan in Beijing around 2008, when he served as the vice minister of environmental protection, according to Strategy Risks.

When Tucker and Grim traveled to China in 2024 for the HFX conference, Pan held a senior role in the United Front Work Department and was also director of China's National Ethnic Affairs Commission, or NEAC, the body that set controversial surveillance policies in Xinjiang.

On the same day the HFX conference began, NEAC announced that foreign scholars would participate in a tightly choreographed tour of the historic Kashgar area—with stops at Kashgar University, the Mo'er Temple ruins, Id Kah Mosque, Kashgar Old City, the China Xinjiang Ethnic Musical Instrument Village, the Kashgar Comprehensive Bonded Zone, the Jiaohe ruins, and Xinjiang University.

"The announcement indicates that at least the core of Tucker and Grim's itinerary was organized in advance as part of the HFX program, rather than independently selected sightseeing," according to the report. "Several institutions connected to HFX and its accompanying tour maintain documented cooperative ties with the XPCC, a CCP-subordinate paramilitary organization that plays a major role in Xinjiang's internal control and economic development." The XPCC was sanctioned by the United States in 2020 for serious human rights abuses against the Uyghurs.

This "demonstrates that the forum’s Chinese organizers curated Tucker and Grim's exposure to Xinjiang"—and that participants were not provided an opportunity to get an unvarnished view of the heavily censored region, according to Strategy Risks.

While at HFX, the Yale professors participated in a roundtable discussion on "Development of Xinjiang and Chinese Path to Modernization." Tucker and Grim, the report notes, "focused their remarks on how Confucianism calls for an environmentally conscious future and how it can spread globally. Grim explained that Confucianism 'advocates that humans and nature live harmoniously.'"

Strategy Risks' research director Sam Shulman told the Washington Free Beacon that "when respected Western scholars participate in government-organized forums, they need to ask hard questions about who is organizing them, who they are engaging with, and what institutions sit behind the itinerary. In this case, that included a senior official with a United Front background and institutions with documented ties to the U.S.-sanctioned Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps."

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