RFA In 2018, a noted Uyghur professor of literature and culture was arrested and fired from her university job for publishing pointed criticism of China’s policies towards Muslim residents of Xinjiang. This year, she is part of an official propaganda campaign defending and supporting practices she once argued against. In the three years since Gulnar Obul was detained and removed from her position at Kashgar University, developments in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have made the scholarly policy critiques from 2016 that landed her in trouble seem mild. In her published dialogue with a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher, Obul said China’s quest for stability “cannot be achieved through documents or commands—it requires real cultural strength and ideas.”