Four instructors from an Iowa college who were teaching in China as part of a partnership with a local university were attacked and injured in a public park there, college officials said on Monday.
Jonathan Brand, the president of Cornell College, a private liberal arts college in the city of Mount Vernon, said the instructors had been “injured in a serious incident” while visiting the park. In a statement, he said they were with a member of the faculty of Beihua University, Cornell’s partner in Jilin City in northeastern China, when the attack occurred.
“We have been in contact with all four instructors and are assisting them during this time,” Mr. Brand said in the statement.
A spokesman for the State Department said U.S. officials were monitoring reports of a stabbing in Jilin, but gave no further information.
Many details about the attack, including the instructors’ conditions and whether they had been specifically targeted, remained unclear on Tuesday.
Video posted on Chinese social media, purportedly taken after the attack, showed three people lying on the ground, surrounded by onlookers. One was soaked in blood, while another appeared to be using his hand to apply pressure to his wound. All three were using their cellphones.
Calls to Beihua University and to Jilin’s central police headquarters were not answered. A man who answered the phone on Tuesday at a police station near the park where the attack apparently occurred said he could not comment because he was not aware of the incident.
Jan Visser, a spokeswoman for Cornell, said Beihua staff members had been in contact with the college, though she said it was unclear what information had been shared. She declined to release additional information about the attack.
Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said on X that her office was in contact with Cornell and the State Department to “further assist these Iowans.”
The partnership between Cornell College and Beihua University began in 2018, Ms. Visser said. A 2018 news release said that Beihua would provide funding for Cornell professors to travel and live in China and teach computer science, mathematics, and physics over a two-week period. Cornell students are not involved in the program, the college said on Monday.
China and the United States have recently sought to bolster their educational ties to help stabilize their tense relationship. Last November, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, announced a plan to invite 50,000 young Americans to participate in exchange and study programs over a period of five years.
Mr. Xi has a personal connection to Iowa, having lived there with a host family in 1985 as part of an agricultural exchange.
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