On Thursday, the New York Post reported that New York University (NYU) is "booting" blind Chinese political dissident and human rights activist Chen Guangcheng from his residency at the school. The report claims the Chinese government pressured NYU to remove Guangcheng or the school's Shanghai campus expansion plans would be put at risk. The article reads:

Chen’s presence at the school didn’t sit well with the Chinese bureaucrats who signed off on the permits for NYU’s expansion there, the sources said.

“The big problem is that NYU is very compromised by the fact they are working very closely with the Chinese to establish a university,” according to one New York-based professor familiar with Chen’s situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In response, NYU released a statement from law professor Jerome Cohen saying the accusations are baseless: 

My understanding with the Chens was that NYU could guarantee him one year in order to get their feet on the ground and transition to a more permanent position. We could not see beyond one year at that point, but I have always made clear, and the university authorities agreed, that our U.S.-Asia Law Institute would allow him to stay beyond one year until a better, more permanent, opportunity arose. He now is in the process of choosing between two attractive opportunities.

The series of events that led Chen to NYU started in 2005, when he brought a class-action lawsuit against Chinese authorities in the Linyi, Shandong province for using forced sterilizations and abortions to enforce the one-child policy. Chen was imprisoned in 2006 and, after his release in 2010, was essentially put under house arrest. Chen escaped in April 2012 to the U.S. embassy in Beijing and was admitted to the U.S., being offered a visiting scholar position at NYU. After a year of residency at NYU, Chen is now considering his options, including an offer from Fordham University's law school.