Congressional Testimony: Foreign Adversaries on College Campuses

The Higher Education Act was cited by President Biden as a path to erase student loan debt until he and other legislators deemed it would take longer than invoking  US Code Title 20, Chapter 28, Subchapter IV, Part G-1 § 1098bb " Waiver authority for response to military contingencies and national emergencies".  The Supreme Court, at the end of June, struck down any proposed wholesale path for students to be released from their loan obligations.

But pertinent to a July 2023 Congressional Hearing is Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, requiring colleges and universities disclose any foreign funding to their institution exceeding $250,000.  

"Yet in 2019, a Senate report found 70 percent of colleges choose to skirt, hide, and cheat so as not to be compliant with this law. We’re at a time when only 30 percent of administrators overseeing our educational institutions deem it important to follow a law, put in place by a Congress with oversight authority......China, for instance, donates money to American universities to fund Confucius Institutes – renowned campus hubs known for pushing propaganda like the denial of the Tiananmen Square massacre. These institutes also monitor and threaten Chinese international students here in the U.S. if they speak out against the CCP." Chair Owens Leads Hearing to Tackle the Threat of Foreign Influence on College Campuses - Burgess Owens (house.gov)

It should be noted that the number of Confucius Institutes has been reduced, however, not so of their new nomenclature. According to the National Association of Scholars database of documents regarding Confucius Institutes and their replacement programs for more than 80 colleges and universities. How Many Confucius Institutes Are in the United States?  

Locally CSUN had a CI on their campus, according to this 2010 article, but not so now. During the 2021 shutdown CSUN hosted a Zoom discussion: Artivism in Taiwan | detailing how art is used in activism.   Similarly UCLA  Global Chinese Philanthropy Initiative (GCPI) is a unique bilateral research project that examines the contributions of Chinese and Chinese American philanthropists in the U.S. and Greater China. This study shows dramatic increases in charitable giving among both Chinese and Chinese American philanthropists.

While Section 117 of the Higher Education Act is not limited to one country, the testimony of Craig Singleton from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) focused on the influence of Chinese entities collaborating with academia. FDD-Testimony_Singleton_Exposing-the-Dangers-of-the-Influence-of-Foreign-Adversaries-on-College-Campuses.pdf 

• "Granted, not all academic collaboration with Chinese entities entails risk, and not all Chinese students are spies, but in many documented cases, the foundational knowledge gleaned from these types of exchanges has been channeled to support military-civil-fusion related innovation...
• China is certainly not the only country with its sights set on American academia, but it is by far
  the most prolific offender...
• Each year, executive branch agencies award millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to
  support basic and applied research initiatives at U.S. universities. Alarmingly, many of these
  U.S. universities also voluntarily maintain student exchange and STEM-related research
  partnerships with Chinese universities directly supporting China’s military...
  
• One need look no further than a recent controversy involving Alfred University to understand the
  scope of the challenge. The little-known New York-based university maintains at least two
  Defense Department contracts totaling at least $17.5 million. One need look no further than a recent controversy involving Alfred University to understand the scope of the challenge. The little-known New York-based university maintains at least two Defense Department contracts totaling at least $17.5 million. These contracts fund sensitive research involving the development and testing of materials used in hypersonic missiles — an emerging field of extreme importance to Washington and Beijing given the ability of these advanced, ultra-fast missiles to evade traditional missile defense networks. Yet Alfred elected to maintain long-standing, unregulated partnerships with the China University of Geosciences, which hosts a major Chinese government-funded and directed defense laboratory specifically tasked with aiding China’s People’s Liberation Army on military research topics....
  

 He also suggested "America’s adversaries are also leveraging their unfettered access to U.S. college campuses to stifle free speech protections, monitor student activities, and propagate disinformation and other false narratives. As a result, these countries have succeeded in weaponizing such access to sow social division, undermine faith in public institutions, and restrict open discourse. These and other brazen activities pose significant challenges to academic freedom and, if left unchecked, threaten to seriously erode the integrity of America’s academic ideals."

GCPI Home (ucla.edu)  

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