A group of professors at the University of Chicago is calling for the eviction of a language instruction program funded by China, claiming that it is a propaganda arm of a regime that tramples on academic freedom.

The Confucius Institute is in line for a renewal of its five-year contract, but 108 U. of C. professors have signed a petition charging the school with "participating in a worldwide, political, pedagogical project that is contrary in many respects to its own academic values" by allowing the organization on its Hyde Park campus.

Bruce Lincoln, a professor of history and religion, said leaders of the petition drive recognize the university has a variety of donors and are not suggesting all of them have to meet a litmus test of some sort. But Lincoln said allowing the Chinese government to hire and pay teachers at the university goes too far.

"No money is pure," Lincoln said. "But some is dirtier than others.

"Suppose the Liggett & Myers (now Liggett Group) tobacco company were to come to a university and ask to take over its toxicology program. Would a university agree to that? But that's the case with the Confucius Institute."

A university spokesman declined to comment on the petition drive or the school's decision to enlist the Confucius Institute. The institute's contract is likely to come up at a faculty meeting set for Tuesday.

China established the Confucius Institute program in 2004 in recognition of a growing demand for Chinese language instruction abroad. The institute provided an opportunity for Beijing to promote the nation and move away from its image in many quarters as a monolithic regime and closed society.

To date, some 400 overseas branches of the institute, funded by China's Ministry of Education, have been established at the college and secondary school level — including one at Chicago Public Schools.

China is not alone in using foreign language instruction as a way of building goodwill. France provides financial support to Alliance Francaise, and Germany funds the Goethe-Institut, both of which have Chicago branches.

But those are free-standing institutions, unlike the campus-based Confucius Institute. Most of the 70 Confucius Institutes on U.S. campuses are at smaller colleges and state universities that would be hard-pressed to offer Chinese language and culture courses without outside funding from the Confucius Institute.

The University of Chicago is one of a small number of elite universities (Stanford and Columbia are among the others) to sign up for a Confucius Institute.

The program has met with resistance elsewhere. McMaster University in Canada shut down its program when a Chinese teacher, Sonia Zhao, said in 2012 that her contract required her to conceal her membership in Falun Gong, a spiritualist movement banned by the Chinese government.

She said that, as part of her training, she was taught to parry students' questions about sensitive subjects — the Tibetan resistance, dissidents killed in Tiananmen Square — by changing the subject to an approved topic.

"Since I left the Confucius Institute, for the first time, I feel free inside," Zhao said at a rally in support of her application for refugee status, which has been granted.

On the basis of that and similar incidents, the Canadian Association of University Teachers called on universities last year to drop or avoid ties with the Confucius Institute because it is "subsidized and supervised by the authoritarian government of China."

Dali Yang, a U. of C. faculty member and director of the Confucius Institute at the school, said he thinks the concerns of his fellow professors are unwarranted. Students taking classes offered by the institute are unlikely to be victims of propaganda, he said.

"Is it possible that University of Chicago students are going to be brainwashed?" Yang said. "They're going to spot a political message."

Jennifer Hubbert, an anthropologist at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, made a study of a Confucius Institute at a West Coast secondary school. In a scholarly paper, she published a tape-recorded interview with a student who said: "When Tiananmen Square comes up in class, we all look at each other. The teachers talk about this beautiful square, a nice place to visit. But it's like, 'Wait, hold on, we're missing some context.'"

Three Chinese instructors are on staff at the U. of C.'s Confucius Institute. A university spokesman said they declined to be interviewed in part because of their limited English abilities.

Anthony Yu, a retired U. of C. professor of Chinese, has never met the visiting Chinese teachers. But a few years ago, he spoke at a large gathering of Confucius Institute teachers placed on American campuses. He found only a few to be fluent in English. Most weren't trained language instructors but signed up for the program in order to see the world beyond China's borders.

"If they can't speak English, what do we need them for? Why not hire locally?" Yu said. "Plenty of Chinese-Americans are bilingual."

Yang, born in China and educated in the U.S., sees the Confucius Institute as a means of shedding misperceptions between the two countries built during the Cold War. As a child, he experienced the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, a time of violent political repression and enforced conformity.

"It was really rough then," Yang said. "But China is more open now."

He attributes the change to China's transformation from an underdeveloped country to an economic powerhouse. Symbolic of that shift, Yang notes, is one of China's objectives in funding the Confucius Institute on his campus: "They want to learn about the work of Milton Friedman," Yang said, referring to the famed U. of C. professor and guru of free-market economics.

By bringing Chinese scholars here and funding research by Chicago scholars there, the Confucius Institute helps nudge China toward greater intellectual freedom, Yang said. He added that the job requires tact and realism.

Asked if the institute could fund a study of pro-democracy dissidents, he replied: "Yes, but you wouldn't want that to stick out. Instead of referring to them as 'dissidents,' you'd call them 'divergent voices.'"

Yu said the price of having the institute on campus, even if it contributes to better relations between China and America, is too high.

"Even if you take $1 from China," Yu said, "you sell out your intellectual birthright."

rgrossman@tribune.com