OPINION:
In 2019, a bipartisan Senate investigation of “Confucius Institutes” exposed policymakers to China’s pervasive use of America’s world-renowned higher education to promote false narratives about China, including sanitizing the regime’s atrocities.
A subsequent Department of Education investigation revealed more than $6 billion in previously undisclosed foreign funds going to U.S. universities, much of it from hostile countries.
This is a growing threat to the integrity of American education, and it requires decisive action.
Enacting the DETERRENT Act — which has twice passed the House with significant bipartisan majorities and is now under consideration in the Senate — is a start. The act would contribute mightily to ensuring necessary transparency and oversight.
Yet time is of the essence. Opponents of transparency want to run out the clock. At least $67 billion has flowed from foreign countries to U.S. universities, but what these foreign governments get for their money remains unclear.
Current law imposes precious little on the disclosure of the terms and conditions of these foreign gifts. Even worse, few effective mechanisms are in place to enforce required disclosures.
This opens the door for China and other bad actors to corrupt debates on hot-button political issues, gain access to sensitive information on U.S. weapons and nuclear technology, and put pressure on educators to take the party lines of foreign dictatorships.
A recent article by the Association of American Universities, an organization representing less than 3% of America’s roughly 2,600 institutions that offer bachelor’s degrees or higher, promotes spurious claims that do not withstand scrutiny.
The group claims, for example, that the DETERRENT Act would “[cut] off all opportunities for academic collaboration with China” and “severely [chill] collaboration with other countries, thus isolating the United States from the global science community.”
This is false and ignores the growing danger of inaction.
The bill would require approval for contracts with foreign institutions from just four statutorily designated “countries of concern”: China, Iran, Russia and North Korea. That hardly “cuts off” legitimate scholarly collaboration.
On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that a contract to teach classical Chinese dance — to cite one of AAU’s tendentious examples — would receive approval as a matter of course (if it is what it claims to be).
As the Senate investigation showed, Confucius Institutes often provided “dance and music performances” and “cooking classes” — but with strings that can compromise academic freedom. These strings include allowing the Chinese government to pick and veto speakers and materials, censor dissenters and otherwise to support the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
It took a Senate investigation to uncover all this because existing law required too little disclosure.
The DETERRENT Act does not restrict joint publications, conference attendance, individual faculty relationships or student enrollment, nor does it prevent ordinary, arms-length commercial transactions. It is explicitly directed at the types of agreements and activities that operated insidiously on American campuses as propaganda for China.
It is also patently false to claim that the measure would “chill” ordinary relationships with countries or “isolate” America from the global scientific community.
It will and should deter “frenemies” such as Qatar, a major provider of largesse to terrorist groups such as Hamas, from using their funding as leverage. In 2024, Texas A&M University’s relationship with Qatar ended in disaster when it was discovered that Qatar functionally bought “full ownership of more than 500 research projects at Texas A&M, some of which are in highly sensitive fields such as nuclear science, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, biotech robotics, and weapons development.”
Does anyone seriously think that such information should have been hidden for years, only to be made public after a lengthy legal battle over public records access? If Texas A&M’s agreement with Qatar was so valuable to the U.S., it would have survived public scrutiny.
Ironically, AAU also cites the administrative actions of the Trump administration, which established a “portal” for universities to report foreign funding, as a reason the measure is unnecessary. AAU says the portal provides a “distorted” picture and that normal Americans cannot “drill down to see the details of the individual gifts and contracts.”
Granted, current law does not require sufficient detail for people to understand what foreign countries are getting for their money. That is part of the problem fixed by DETERRENT, but it is perverse to suggest that less disclosure is the answer.
Nor is there merit to the trivial suggestions that the act would raise privacy issues for professors and private donors. The legislative process that yielded the final version of the bill has more than sufficiently addressed these concerns.
There is no mystery here. The foreign largesse of hostile (or potentially hostile) countries benefits a small number of academic institutions desperate to keep the money flowing without scrutiny. This is counter to the best interests of our country, students and legitimate academic collaboration.
Most Americans distrust higher educational institutions, and with good reason. Insisting on transparency is a necessary condition to begin the long process of restoring that trust.
No matter what lobbyists say, a silent majority of academics agree with taking bold action to defend the U.S.
• Robert Kaufman is the Robert and Katheryn Dockson professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. He previously taught at Colgate University, the Naval War College and the University of Vermont. His views are his own.
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