Chinese Officials Seek to Muffle Student Protest Over Lecturer’s Detention

In the wake of rare demonstrations over the detention of a charismatic professor, Chinese university administrators visited student protesters on Monday and asked them to pledge not to cause more trouble, The New York Times reported today. The professor, Ding Xiaoping, who earlier spent three years in prison for his role as a student organizer in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, has recently built a career as a popular lecturer at universities around China. The protesters believe he is being detained as Beijing cracks down on dissent ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Communist revolution, on October 1.