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Last month, a Chinese government think tank bashed history professors from Harvard, Georgetown and other leading American universities regarding things they wrote — at least 15 years ago — about events that occurred more than two centuries ago.

"This was a uniquely vitriolic attack," says Georgetown's Jim Millward. The article calls him as "arrogant," "overbearing" and an "imperialist," and dismisses Millward's and his colleagues' scholarship as "academically absurd."

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Georgetown University professor Jim Millward, photographed in Beijing's Forbidden City. Courtesy of Jim Millward hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Jim Millward

Georgetown University professor Jim Millward, photographed in Beijing's Forbidden City.

Courtesy of Jim Millward

In all the article, published on the website of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences had 88 exclamation points. "It was written in the style of a Cultural Revolution denunciation," says the professor, who teaches Chinese and Central Asian history.

(Millward is married to NPR Executive Editor Madhulika Sikka, who was not involved in the production of this story.)

What did he and the other professors do to provoke such wrath? They offered a historical interpretation of the Qing Dynasty that contradicts the Communist Party's line.

In academic circles, it's called "New Qing History." Keep in mind, the Qing collapsed more than a century ago, a few decades before the Communists took control in 1949.

"How could something so arcane become so political?" says Mark Elliott, a Harvard professor who also got slammed.

For the answer, look no further than George Orwell's novel 1984: "He who controls the past, controls the future."

The American professors say the Qing created China's modern borders by conquering people in the far west who weren't Chinese.

"This is totally at odds with a powerful, but I believe ultimately flawed narrative of the unification of China, which is that these territories by rights belonged to the empire," says Elliott, who is director of Harvard's Fairbanks Center for Chinese Studies.

Elliott says the Communist Party insists these territories have always been part of China, "going back as long as you'd like to look."

These territories include what we now call Tibet and Xinjiang, where some people bitterly oppose Chinese rule. More than 140 Tibetans have lit themselves on fire in recent years to protest China's repressive religious policies there, and in Xinjiang — home to a mostly Muslim Uighur minority — terrorists have launched a series of knife and bomb attacks.

Jim Millward says the government fears that the work of foreign scholars could be used to help justify pushes for independence.

"The fact that the Communist Party wants to assert or hang on to the argument that its territory has been a part of China since antiquity shows that they're really insecure about their rule in those places," he says.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences declined to provide contacts for Li Zhiting, a retired professor who wrote the article that attacked the scholars.

If the piece was designed to enforce the Communist Party line, it doesn't seem too effective so far. Ge Zhaoguang, who studies the Qing Dynasty at Shanghai's Fudan University, wasn't impressed.

"I think this article is a very terrible article," Ge said in an interview at his campus office. "It doesn't have high academic standards. For scholars like us, it has no impact at all."

Ge doesn't agree with all the arguments the American professors make about the Qing Dynasty, but he welcomes different perspectives. That way, Ge says, China can better understand its own history.

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Whoa, I wouldn't want to be Steve Easterbrook right about now.

The newish CEO of McDonald's — who has pledged to turn the fast-food giant into a progressive burger chain — is getting an earful this week, as the company prepares to convene its annual shareholders meeting on Thursday.

A few thousand workers protested outside the company's corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., Wednesday afternoon, chanting, "We work, we sweat, put $15 in our check," referring to the push for a $15 an hour minimum wage.

And it's not just workers rallying for higher wages. A slew of activists have descended on Oak Brook to register a host of beefs with the company.

There's the Toxic Taters Coalition, a group that wants to raise awareness about the levels of pesticides used on potatoes that McDonald's buys.

And there's a leader from the Chicago Teacher's Union who takes issue with a fundraising practice called McTeacher's Nights. In these events, teachers and administrators work behind the counter at McDonald's on a given night and invite their students to come dine.

"We're gearing up to make a big splash," says Kara Kaufman, a spokesperson for the Value [The] Meal campaign organized by the watchdog group Corporate Accountability International.

Corporate Accountability International plans to bring a team inside the meeting that includes members of the Chicago Teachers Union, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, organizers with Restaurant Opportunities Center United and the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood. Together, they plan to challenge McDonald's labor practices and kid-targeted marketing.

The Salt

This 9-Year-Old Girl Told McDonald's CEO: Stop Tricking Kids

Kaufman says the coalition is asking McDonald's to "analyze how its political spending and marketing practices align with its stated values." The group has filed a shareholders' resolution aimed at bringing awareness to the discrepancies between the two.

For example, Kaufman says McDonald's claims to treat employees with fairness and dignity, but "it has made contributions to politicians and organizations that publicly oppose an increase in the minimum wage."

The resolution is not likely to pass, given that the McDonald's board of directors has already recommended voting against it.

Another example: As we've reported, in 2013 Don Thompson, the former CEO of McDonald's, said point blank, "We're not marketing to schools." But Charlie Feick, an organizer with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, who is also a teacher in Massachusetts, wants to press this issue.

"This is simply not true," Feick plans to tell the shareholders' meeting. "Under the guise of promoting everything from reading to healthy lifestyles, you regularly send Ronald [McDonald] into schools in the U.S. and throughout the world to push your junk-food brand," Feick is planning to say.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, along with a bevy of other organizations, has been pushing for McDonald's to stop marketing to kids in school.

So, if he gets the chance to directly address Easterbrook Thursday, here's Feick's question: "Will you finally commit to ending the predatory practice of targeting our children in schools?"

If you want to watch the shareholders meeting unfold, you can get as close as we reporters in the media who are covering the issue — watch it via webcast. As The Guardian has reported, McDonald's has banned the media from actually attending the meeting.

marketing to kids

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Six months ago, when President Obama announced sweeping and polarizing executive actions on immigration, immigrant families all over the country were watching his rare prime-time address.

But those actions have now fallen out of the headlines and the highest-profile changes are on hold.

The actions were aimed at people who have been in the country more than five years and who have children who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.

"You'll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation. You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law," he said.

That night, Karla Rodriguez was at a watch party in Las Vegas where she lives. Obama was talking about people like her parents.

"It was just, it was crazy," she said. "Everybody was crying."

She ran to her mom Evelia Beltran, and then they called her dad, Cesar Orozco. He said his first reaction was joy and hope that it would come to pass.

"I also thought of many possibilities that we would have as part of this country," Beltran said, according to a translation of his Spanish.

Her dad said the part that mattered more than anything was "the security."

They have a mixed-status family. Orozco, Beltran and three of their children came to the country illegally. Two younger children were born in the U.S. They worry constantly about being separated. Eleven-year-old Evelyn Orosco says when she wakes in the morning, her first thought is whether her parents have been picked up by immigration.

"So I have to like get up and be like 'mom are you here? Dad? So it's really scary," she said.

Big sister Karla Rodriguez remembers when she was about ten years old being invited to hang out with a friend at a casino with carnival games for kids.

"I had seen on the news that there had been immigration raids," she said. "And I was terrified to ask my dad to drive me because in my head I said if we leave the house they're going to get deported."

Under the president's program, her parents would have been submitting applications right about now for a temporary reprieve from deportation. But the program is on hold pending court action. Twenty-six states sued to block the president's executive actions, arguing they would be harmed.

"This issue in this lawsuit is not about immigration, the issue in this lawsuit is about abuse of executive power," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is leading the charge, told NBC's Meet the Press in December.

"And if this abuse is not stopped it will erode the Constitution that has attracted so many people to this country for generations."

For supporters of the lawsuit, the uncertainty now faced by immigrant families isn't the result of the suit, but rather the president's decision to go it alone with executive action. The legal process could drag on for months or even years.

Karla Rodriguez works as a community organizer and counsels immigrant families like her own.

"You know members of the community ask me. When is this going to happen and I can't say anything. I just say well, we're just going to wait. And it sucks," she said.

Rodriguez is encouraging people she talks to, who think they might qualify, to gather their documentation. If the program ever does get started, immigrants will have to prove they've been in the U.S. for more than five years. For her dad that's easy. He has utility bills and pay stubs. For her mom, it's tougher because Beltran has been a stay at home mom.

"Everything has been put in his name," she said. "For me, as a wife, I have nothing."

Rodriguez said she's telling her mom and others to think outside the box. "Get creative. If you have a party invitation and a picture, send that. Because you have to get creative with how you prove you've been here and you qualify."

The challenge of proving residency is something the Obama administration was prepared to grapple with. But until the lawsuit is resolved, that planning is on hold too.

Stephanie Packer was 29 when she found out she had a terminal lung disease.

Shots - Health News

Contemplating Brittany Maynard's Final Choice

That's the same age as Brittany Maynard, who last year was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Last fall, Maynard, of Northern California, opted to end her life with the help of a doctor in Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide is legal.

Maynard's story continues to garner support for right-to-die legislation moving through legislatures in California and several other states. Now another young California woman is stepping up to share her story, but she wants people to draw a different conclusion.

Stephanie Packer is in her kitchen, preparing lunch with her four children on a recent spring afternoon.

"Do you want to help?" she asks the eager crowd of siblings gathered tightly around her at the stovetop.

"Yeah!" yells 5-year-old Savannah.

"I do!" says Jacob, who is 8.

Calmly managing four kids as each vies for the chance to help make chicken salad sandwiches can be trying, but Packer cherishes these moments.

Shots - Health News

California Faith Groups Divided Over Right-To-Die Bill

In 2012, after suffering a series of debilitating lung infections, she went to a doctor who diagnosed her with scleroderma. The autoimmune disease causes hardening of the skin and (in about one-third of cases) other organs. The doctor told Packer that it had settled in her lungs.

"And I said, 'OK, what does this mean for me?' " she recalls. "And he said, 'Well, with this condition you have about three years left to live.' "

Packer, 32, is on oxygen full time and she takes a slew of medications.

She says she has been diagnosed with a series of conditions linked to or associated with scleroderma, including lupus, gastroparesis, Raynaud's phenomenon, interstitial cystitis and trigeminal neuralgia.

The Two-Way

As Planned, Right-To-Die Advocate Brittany Maynard Ends Her Life

Packer's various maladies have her in constant, sometimes excruciating pain, she says. She also can't digest food properly and feels extremely fatigued almost all the time.

Some days, Packer says, are good. Others are marked by low energy and pain that only sleep can relieve.

"For my kids, I need to be able to control the pain because that's what concerns them the most," she says.

But Packer says physician-assisted suicide isn't something she is considering.

"Wanting the pain to stop, wanting the humiliating side effects to go away — that's absolutely natural," Packer says. "I absolutely have been there and I still get there some days. But I don't get to that point of wanting to end it all, because I have been given the tools to understand that today is a horrible day, but tomorrow doesn't have to be."

She and husband Brian, 36, are devout Catholics. They agree with their church that doctors should never hasten death.

"We're a faith-based family," he says. "God put us here on earth and only God can take us away. And he has a master plan for us, and if suffering is part of that plan, which it seems to be, then so be it."

Stephanie Packer, 32, is terminally ill with the autoimmune disease scleroderma. Stephanie O'Neill/KPCC hide caption

itoggle caption Stephanie O'Neill/KPCC

They also believe if California legislation called SB 128 passes, it would create the potential for abuse. Pressure to end one's life, they fear, could become a dangerous norm, especially in a world defined by high-cost medical care.

Instead of fatal medication, Stephanie says she hopes other terminally ill people consider existing palliative medicine and hospice care.

"Death can be beautiful and peaceful," she says. "It's a natural process that should be allowed to happen on its own." Even, she says, when it poses uncomfortable challenges.

Brian has traded his full-time job at a lumber company for weekend handyman work so he can care for Stephanie and the children. The family downsized, moving into a two-bedroom apartment they share with their dog and two pet geckos.

Brian says life is good.

"I have four beautiful children. I get to spend so much more time with them than most head of households," he says. "I get to spend more time with my wife than most husbands do."

Shots - Health News

A Busy ER Doctor Slows Down To Help Patients Cope With Adversity

And it's that kind of support — from family, friends and people in her community — that Stephanie says keeps her living in gratitude, even as she struggles with her terminal illness and the realization that she will not be there to see her children grow up.

"I know eventually that my lungs are going to give out, which will make my heart give out," she says. "And I know that's going to happen sooner than I would like — sooner than my family would like. But I'm not making that my focus. My focus is today."

Stephanie says she is hoping for a double lung transplant, which could give her a few more years. In the meantime, this month marks three years since her doctor gave her three years to live. So every day, she says, is a blessing.

This story is part of a partnership with NPR, KPCC and Kaiser Health News.

right to die

Brittany Maynard

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