Two of the protesters left a few minutes into the question-and-answer session, while another two sat down shortly afterwards. The final protester remained standing through the entire session.

Shortly after, when Vogel announced that Jiang would answer a question from the audience, Philip J. Cunningham, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard on leave from Tokyo's Japan Times, seized the opportunity to shout out, "I have a question."

Cunningham, who appeared in "Gate of Heavenly Peace," a PBS documentary on Tiananmen Square, and who was present during the student protests, was first ignored by Vogel, who instead pointed to Bogert.

When Cunningham persisted, shouting "What about Wei Jingsheng?" Vogel repeatedly ordered him to sit down.

Wei, the longest-serving Chinese political prisoner, was last interviewed by Cunningham before he was arrested again for speaking with foreign reporters and the U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights, John Shattuck, after Wei was released from prison in 1993, 14 years after his initial 1979 arrest.

Wei is currently serving another 14-year prison term.

"I wanted to ask him to release Wei Jingsheng," Cunningham said in an interview after the speech. "Wei had been released, but the Chinese reneged on that. They've been playing hardball, but it's become a travesty of justice."

Despite these disturbances, most said that the Sanders Theatre audience was interested in hearing what Jiang had to say.

"The people were really trying to be polite, but there a lot of people with issues with what Jiang is doing in China," said a fellow with the Fairbank Center. "Most people inside, though, are interested in the democratic process of dialogue--engagement but not endorsement."

Reaction

The same Fairbank fellow needed only one word to sum up her feelings on Jiang's speech: "fluff."

"He was politically astute," the fellow said. "I don't think he really wanted to hear American reaction. It was pure acting. He knew that would be the issue--whether he would take questions."

Among the crowds that flowed out of Boylston and Sanders after the speech, it was not difficult to find people dissatisfied with Jiang's answers.

"I didn't learn much [from going to the speech], but I did learn that Chinese politicians act the same as politicians in the United States," said Bryce S. Klempner '00, who said he went to the speech to learn more about the Chinese government and its international politics.

"He wasn't explicit about whether the Chinese government actually did something wrong in Tiananmen Square," said Nikhil Wagle '99, who woke up early Saturday morning to watch the televised broadcast of the speech in his room.