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Only former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping could sue Harvard for libeling him, but he can't, since he's dead, judge rules

A federal judge today threw out a lawsuit against Harvard University by a Cambridge resident who charged a book published by the school's press libeled the Chinese dictator, who died in 1997.

Xianwen Liu had originally sued Harvard pro se over the book, by an author who is also dead, in Cambridge District Court. Earlier this month, Harvard had the case "removed" to federal court because Liu was claiming a description in the book of a meeting Deng may or may not have attended violated Liu's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, which are the subject of federal-court jurisdiction.

Only, as US District Court Judge Richard Stearns ruled today, in an order he posted as an attachment to the case docket, rather than a full-blown written decision, federal law requires a person to show "standing" or proof they have "suffered an injury in fact--an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized; and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical."

Liu, he noted, is not Deng and did not offer any proof of being specifically injured by the allegedly offending book section or that Deng had authorized the suit on his behalf.

He has not alleged that he suffered any concrete, actual injury, and he offers no basis to assert a third-party claim on behalf of Deng Xiaoping. The case accordingly must be dismissed.

In his original complaint, Liu charged that author and Harvard sociology professor Ezra Vogel made a "Grave Error" that was so grave Harvard needed to correct it immediately, not just because it allegedly libeled Deng but because it could harm Vogel - who died in 2020 - and even Harvard itself.

As a book customer, I think that I have the right given by the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution to ask the publisher or the author to correct a Grave Error.

At issue, at least for Liu, is a section in Vogel's 2013 book, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Note: If you click the link and buy the book, UHub gets a cut), which describes what Liu calls "the so-called Zuhai meeting" - a meeting Vogel described in the city of Zhuhai in 1992 at which Deng, who had officially retired as premier, helped solidify support for the economic reforms he had put in place after Mao's death.

Liu's 48-page complaint contains a detailed description of how Vogel got it all wrong and suggests the meeting never actually happened or if it did, that Deng might not have even attended it and that such a libel just cannot stand.

Liu's complete complaint (2.4M PDF).

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Comments

The 48 page complaint had me scratching my head but in true college fashion it's in 24 point font and double spaced.

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Voting closed 34

Imagine doing this instead of literally anything else.

Let's mail this dude a Fleshlight.

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Voting closed 33

The given name of Deng is Xiaoping, instead of Xiaopeng. While sounds similar, Xiaopeng is another wildly used male's name in China.

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Voting closed 11

Name fixed.

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Voting closed 18

"widely" used name. Not wildly.

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Voting closed 9

Still dead..

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Voting closed 18

Beat me to it!

Maybe Xiaoping and Franco can file a zombie class action suit?

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Voting closed 13

This dude really doesn't understand the first amendment, if he thinks it means the courts can tell a publisher what to print.

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Voting closed 21

Xianwen Liu is always welcome in China.
I am somewhat of a mind to correct errors, but usually take it up with a publisher.
I thought that was what "asking a publisher or the author to correct a Grave Error" actually was. Seems like he skipped straight to a lawsuit for publicity and a pat on the head?

If Xianwen Liu wants to join a different authoritarian cult, there are plenty here in the states.

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Voting closed 6

Pro se is a good way to hide whoever providing the funding and support for writing the complaint.

Is this complaint actually coming from a Communist Chinese agency? We live in a new cold war with the Chinese government. The complaint shows syntax that looks like a translation. Doesn't meant that the actual writer is not fluent in English. But it is worth noting especially when filing a docket in Federal Court. Federal judges like good writing.

The first cold war with the Soviet Union was blunt. It created an environment where the Soviets were too often in the news as bad actors. Communist Chinese have learned that subtly is better. Don't be obvious in disruption. Use methods to determine the weaknesses of the US system. Create the impression that China likes US citizens.

Nuance is more important for misdirecting American attention from the work of taking over the Southeast Asian waters as well as turning Africa into a sphere of influence.

Not that the US never did the same. But in the same of ideological and global politics there are ultimately no rules. All is fair ....

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Voting closed 7

I'm no lawyer but I've read through some of the legal filings related to local cases over the years and this pro se filing was not the work of some shadow group of expert Constitutional lawyers.

If someone wants to file a lousy complaint that has no standing and will get tossed before it goes anywhere, I'm not going to worry too much about that.

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Voting closed 9

What? That makes no sense.

There is no concern about shadow Constitutional lawyers. The issue is whether this complaint was funded by an agency of the Communist Chinese government. Very doubtful if there are any experts in US Constitutional law in mainland China.

Pay attention to the syntax. It is off. Not completely wrong. But with slight oddities that sound like the come from a translation.

"I am a customer who had bought." Putting had there is incorrect. It is redundant.

Had repeats continuing the redundancy.

Okay, so the writer is not a native English speaker. Yet the writer manages to write the full document.

But the most important question is what is the motivation of the plaintiff? Why spend as much time as the writer did to pursue what is pretty obvious?

Communist China has opened non-governmental and illegal policing operations stations in the US and other nations. China sponsor college based organizations.

Not necessarily funded by Communist China, nevertheless there is at least one instance where a Chinese young adult threatens physical harm to another Chinese student here in Boston.

But that is the subtly of Communist Chinese government operations. Avoid the overt hostility of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Use more subtle means.

We are in a cold war. One where we are providing China with the rope to hang us.

The irony is that in the culture war hysteria and lust for power that is the miasma of Trump the people who in the past were the most anti-Communist virtually ignore that the competition for global power between totalitarian mastery by a few versus what is at least a wider oligarchy is not worth their attention.

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Voting closed 6

It's a stupid lawsuit that was destined to go nowhere. If you're worried about some kind of courts-based Red Invasion, you should be *relieved* that they're this incompetent.

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Voting closed 6