The Federalist, a conservative online magazine, published an article Monday (Feb. 1) by Rachelle Peterson, director of research at the National Association of Scholars, saying that the Chinese Communist Party has used the Thousand Talents Program, donations and Confucius Institutes to influence U.S. Many colleges and universities are covering up the infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party. She called on the Biden administration to continue to enforce legal requirements for transparency in college and university donations, as the previous administration did, saying it is a matter of U.S. national security.
A translation of Petersen’s article follows.
It is Time to enforce accountability in U.S. higher Education institutions, which is a matter of our national security.
Since the inauguration of President Biden, the United States has faced a new chapter of challenges from the Chinese Communist Party, a significant part of which involves protecting American higher education.
The Communist Party’s “Thousand Talents Program” has attracted thousands of American scholars and researchers, including Charles Lieber, a former Harvard University professor and chair of the chemistry department. He was indicted by the Justice Department last June after the Chinese Communist Party paid him $50,000 a month in exchange for his research expertise.
As part of a major outreach effort, the Communist government-controlled Confucius Institute has made a big push overseas to promote the soft power of the CCP. In addition, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has sent some 2,500 military officers as graduate students to Western universities, including in the United States.
Although Biden has not yet commented directly on the Confucius Institute, China Daily, the Communist Party’s propaganda mouthpiece, has called on him to “correct” the Trump administration’s “fear of the Confucius Institute.
Meanwhile, Biden’s choice for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, spent a lengthy Senate confirmation hearing trying to defend a paid lecture she gave at a Confucius Institute in 2019. Greenfield has touted the investments of “Big Brother China” in Africa and the example it has set for African countries to transform from poverty to industrialized economies.
Because U.S. higher education is vulnerable to foreign interference, a fundamental policy imperative is transparency. We need higher education institutions to be transparent about donations from foreign countries. This will discourage colleges and universities from engaging in shady deals with foreign countries in the first place. The data it provides may also help create more targeted policies and can help watchdog organizations like the National Association of Scholars distinguish between foreign donations that are beneficial and those that may be harmful. It allows the public to see what foreign money is flowing to local universities or alma maters, which can help them decide where to send their children, where to donate, etc.
Since the 1980s, federal law has required colleges and universities to report foreign gifts and contracts that reach and exceed $250,000 in a year. But this legal requirement, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, has never been enforced. As a result, U.S. universities and foreign donors often make secret deals in private. They often do not report them as required by law, sometimes dragging their feet for long periods of time to avoid public scrutiny.
Two years ago, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos launched an investigation into non-compliant universities. It was the first time since President Reagan signed the Higher Education Act in 1986 that a secretary of education had enforced the requirements of Section 117, resulting in the detection of more than $6.5 billion in total undeclared amounts.
This is a shocking figure, with foreign inflows to U.S. higher education institutions amounting to $6.5 billion. The impact of this money on U.S. colleges and universities and the dependence it creates illustrates why transparency is so important.
Unlike many regulations, requiring transparency does not create much of a burden on colleges and universities, but it can provide significant benefits to the public. It is not technically difficult for colleges and universities to report their endowments. For colleges and universities with professional finance and accounting offices, tracking thousands of gifts is no mean feat.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Education further streamlined the process by launching a new online portal to collect such reports. According to a recent report released by the Department of Education last November, the colleges and universities surveyed “record very granular data,” including even records of individual gifts of $100 or less.
Yet colleges have steadfastly resisted the demand for transparency in foreign donations. For years, they refused to file disclosure reports. When the Trump Administration began enforcing the law, colleges and universities cried foul.
The American Council on Education, the largest higher education lobby in Washington, D.C., and more than 30 other organizations recently sent a letter to Biden calling for a “suspension” of the Section 117 reporting requirement. What are they trying to hide?
Removing the transparency requirement for foreign donations would be a mistake. State legislatures must enact state-level transparency laws. The university board should publicly report any foreign donations or contracts received by the university. Parents of students, alumni, students and taxpayers should demand transparency from the university.
In addition to maintaining at least the current transparency requirements, the Biden Administration must.
i. maintain and supplement the existing new information collection portal to ensure public access to the names of all foreign gifts and donors.
ii. complete the rulemaking process currently underway to allow the Department of Education to collect copies of contracts signed by colleges and universities with foreign countries. These documents are essential to validate the accuracy of university self-reporting and will provide substantial transparency.
Third, continue to investigate universities that do not meet the requirements. The Department of Education has investigated more than a dozen universities, several of which have refused to cooperate, apparently banking on their new White House masters to give them a pass. Completing these investigations will preserve the integrity of the law and show that transparency is valued.
Fourth, lower the threshold for disclosure. The current law sets the threshold for reporting from a single donor at $250,000 over the course of a year, which is too high. The starting point for reporting gifts could be smaller. For example, Confucius Institutes have been busy changing their names and rebranding since they were exposed, and they typically receive about $100,000 a year from the Chinese Communist government. Several bills have been introduced to lower the starting point for filing. States should also implement similar state disclosure laws.
V. Develop policies to help universities move away from dependence on foreign funding, such as: reducing the amount of funding they receive from authoritarian institutions; reducing federal funding to institutions that receive more than $250,000 in funding from the CCP in one year; and approving state legislation to prohibit funding to public universities with Confucius Institutes.
It is time for accountability in U.S. higher education institutions, which is a matter of our national security.
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