Many colleges and universities have reported a drop in Chinese enrollments this fall — more than 20 percent at some flagships — and the decline is likely to continue. The bitter state of U.S.-China relations is an important factor in the phenomenon.
This year, Chinese students and scholars coming to the United States are facing tough new U.S. visa restrictions, unprecedented American airport searches, and harsh questions about their motives for study in this country.
Some of those students and scholars are experiencing suspicion and even hostility in their daily life. While the U.S. government has legitimate grievances with China, American colleges need to ensure that they are doing everything they can to protect all members of their community from discrimination and punitive measures aimed at one country or ethnic group.
While colleges are obviously concerned about the effect of declining Chinese student numbers on tuition revenue, the issue goes much deeper, to our core national interests and security.
U.S.-China education exchanges have brought enormous benefits to both countries for four decades, and colleges can help make the case that it is in America’s vital interest to have Chinese and other foreign students and scholars at our institutions, experiencing our way of life, and contributing to our classrooms and knowledge base.
Unfortunately, U.S. policy is moving in the opposite direction.
The Trump administration threw down the China gauntlet more than a year ago, when Director Christopher Wray of the FBI first stated that China poses a “whole-of-society” threat to the United States and is using “nontraditional collectors,” such as students and researchers, to steal American intellectual property. President Trump himself is reported to have remarked that most Chinese students in the United States are probably spies. FBI agents have visited dozens of American campuses with warnings about the need for monitoring Chinese students and scholars.
Several American colleges have voiced their concerns. Institution leaders from Berkeley, Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, MIT and at least a dozen others have issued strong public statements in recent months, reaffirming support for international students and scholars and for the principles of open academic exchange.
Those actions are encouraging, but we need even more college leaders to take a stand.
They should do so while emphasizing their dedication to preventing foreign political meddling or spying and theft of intellectual property, whether the perpetrators are from China or elsewhere.
Colleges already have numerous rules governing foreign influence on campus — from guidelines for appropriate classroom behavior to rules on accepting and reporting foreign funding and protecting classified research. Campus leaders urgently need to ensure that these rules are widely known, understood, and up-to-date — in recent months, for example, Cornell, MIT and others have reviewed and reissued campus guidance for international research and academic collaborations.
A spate of recent cases involving ethnic Chinese scientists has brought this issue into high relief. Several Chinese-American neuroscientists from Emory University and scientists at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Texas, were unceremoniously dismissed from their jobs this spring for failure to fully disclose their links with Chinese universities. In late summer, a University of Kansas chemist was indicted on federal fraud charges for accepting U.S. grant money while failing to report his contract with a Chinese university.
None of these scientists have been accused of espionage, and all received unusually harsh and swift judgments. These cases challenge colleges to make sure that their academic community knows and follows the rules — and is treated appropriately when the rules are broken.
It also challenges colleges to emphasize to the public that while a small number of individuals have clearly broken or bypassed the rules, these cases do not form a sound basis for tarnishing the broad Chinese community at colleges around the county.
The truth is that several million Chinese have studied and worked at colleges in the United States in recent decades, earning a solid collective reputation for academic achievement.
Chinese undergraduates are now the largest group of foreign students in the United States, outnumbering students from India, South Korea, and the other top-sending nations combined. And a large number choose to stay in the United States — including almost 90 percent of the Chinese doctoral degree earners, according to a 2015 study. Many become college teachers and administrators, as well as Americans in all walks of life.
Sentiments about China are running high on U.S. campuses this fall as the two countries continue to air economic and political grievances. Chinese students and scholars will not always express popular positions, and many are capable of clumsy efforts to defend China from perceived slights. Colleges can help by reminding them of the rules of engagement in the United States while at the same time supporting their rights to express their views here.
Similarly, colleges should support the right of scholars to collaborate with counterparts in China and accept funding from Chinese sources as long as they follow all protocols and reporting requirements.
While U.S. colleges can no longer count on steady annual increases in Chinese students and scholars, they can and should make sure that the Chinese members of their community continue to be welcomed, treated fairly, and valued for their contributions.
Everyone on campus has a part to play in protecting the legitimate rights of Chinese and other foreign students and scholars. That effort is at the core of American higher education and squarely in the larger national interest.
Madelyn Ross is the associate director of the China studies program in the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University and former director of the Washington office of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center.
