Annotation on an Academic Criticism Situation Brief
(April 23, 1966)


This document[I] is very good, distribute it to all comrades for reading. University faculty and students, middle school teachers, and senior high school students in all regions should all participate in the Cultural Revolution movement.
Mao Zedong
April 23


[I] Refers to the Situation Brief of the General Office of Education of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee dated April 19, 1966, concerning the symposium convened by the Party Committee of the Ministry of Higher Education to deploy the in-depth development of the academic criticism movement. The brief stated that on April 17, the Party Committee of the Ministry of Higher Education convened a meeting of Party secretaries and propaganda department heads from ten universities in Beijing and Tianjin to discuss and deploy the issue of deeply developing the academic criticism movement. At the meeting, Peking University and other schools reported on the academic criticism situation in the preceding period, pointing out that the main problem currently existing in criticism is that the leadership's thinking lags behind reality, with more criticism conducted from academic viewpoints and less from political viewpoints, and a lack of conscious recognition that this is a class struggle on the political-ideological front. The meeting made the following deployments for the in-depth development of this movement going forward:
(1) The leadership of each institution must clearly understand that this is a struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie over two lines on the literary, artistic, and educational fronts, and also a struggle to thoroughly eliminate the monopoly of bourgeois experts over education on the educational front, a struggle to seize educational leadership.
(2) At present, all work in higher education institutions must be integrated with the current academic criticism, using academic criticism to propel the educational revolution and teaching reform.
(3) Boldly mobilize the masses, organizing faculty, students, and staff to actively participate in this battle.