This semester, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte approached the university with a dilemma.
He had been identified for an award in China, and he was unsure of whether he should take it, given the heightened geopolitical tensions, said Joan F. Lorden, the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Charlotte.
“In the past, he would have treated that as an honor and probably would have accepted it without concern,” she said. “The question now is, What do we tell folks?”
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This semester, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte approached the university with a dilemma.
He had been identified for an award in China, and he was unsure of whether he should take it, given the heightened geopolitical tensions, said Joan F. Lorden, the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Charlotte.
“In the past, he would have treated that as an honor and probably would have accepted it without concern,” she said. “The question now is, What do we tell folks?”
The exchange demonstrates the increasingly tricky path that American research universities have had to navigate in recent months: They must heed U.S. warnings of Chinese espionage and intellectual-property theft while also tending to longstanding practices that support campuses’ ideals of openness — and that bolster their budgets.
Some politicians have charged that campuses are too soft on China, particularly through foreign-talent programs that recruit experts and academics, an accusation that some campus leaders reject. But universities have much to lose if they incorrectly navigate the moment. On the one hand, many colleges rely on Chinese academics to pad undergraduate enrollment revenue, staff graduate departments, and collaborate on high-profile research. They say these relationships are crucial to their missions, and Chinese-born professors make up the core of many departments.
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But campuses also know they cannot risk making an error in the fraught political environment, so they are left scrambling to draw lines and make decisions.
For now, many universities have made practical changes this semester, re-evaluating appointments in China and encouraging professors to review what information they share publicly about their research.
Chinese-U.S. relations have been a key topic in major academic gatherings this year. At the Association of American Universities’ fall presidents’ meeting, attendees discussed the topic, and at another recent national meeting of public universities, an FBI official appeared on a panel addressing balancing collaboration with national-security concerns.
Government rhetoric resembles a “new Cold War,” said Carol T. Christ, the University of California at Berkeley’s chancellor, in an interview at The Chronicle’s offices this fall.
The implication, which she said she rejects, is that somehow universities, by their openness, are a soft spot in “the armor of the U.S.”
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‘Risks’ of Foreign Engagement
Warnings from federal officials about how colleges should engage with China escalated earlier this year, setting the stage for a tense fall.
In March, a group of Republican lawmakers proposed making the Confucius Institutes, campus-based branches of public-education and cross-cultural organization affiliated with the Chinese government, register as foreign agents.
In June, the State Department began forcing Chinese graduate students who study in “sensitive research fields” to reapply for visas each year, instead of every five years, The New York Times reported.
Also this year, Rep. Michael J. Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, proposed an amendment that would allow the Department of Defense to terminate research funding for individuals who previously or currently participated in foreign-talent programs.
Some U.S. senators said Gallagher’s proposal could unfairly burden campuses, and they urged the Armed Services Committee to eliminate it. (In that letter, they warned that some Chinese scholars who seek to advance the interests of their own governments “present a threat to our national security and economy.”)
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Uncertainty regarding how that legislation would proceed played out in one academic hiring process over the summer, when Texas Tech University was finalizing a contract with Luis R. Herrera-Estrella, a star plant-biology scholar set to come to campus in the fall.
But his outside appointment in China raised a question. Nanjing Agricultural University could host Herrera-Estrella’s research in China for up to two months annually. The federal government was considering the legislation that could restrict Department of Defense funding for researchers involved in China’s foreign-talent programs, and there was some concern that the bill could expand to include other fields besides defense, Texas Tech administrators wrote in a letter to Herrera-Estrella.
In the letter, the university assured him that if other fields were included in the legislation, Herrera-Estrella and Tech would develop “a plan to manage potential conflicts of interest and commitment created by this appointment.” Ultimately, Gallagher’s amendment was replaced before the legislation passed.
Herrera-Estrella’s contract language was a “due diligence response” to the situation, said Joseph A. Heppert, Texas Tech’s vice president for research and innovation, in an email through a spokesman.
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“We partner with our faculty to help them achieve their goals for international collaborations,” he said. “Our office consistently works with faculty to allow them to maintain longstanding relationships and commitments, while keeping them informed about risks and potential pitfalls of certain types of foreign engagement programs.”
Heppert and Jennifer Horn, the university’s managing director for export and security compliance, warned Texas Tech employees in a letter that they should be wary of accepting appointments in talent-recruitment programs in China.
In the letter, they wrote that they recently worked with a Texas Tech faculty member who had applied to a foreign-talent program in China, intending to work at a premier research institution. Instead, they wrote, he was urged to work with a different university — one that the U.S. State Department has said is linked to the Chinese military. “After consultations with the FBI, our office advised the faculty member to suspend his application to the program,” they wrote.
The University of Missouri system issued a similar cautionary notice that indicated that campus leadership had attended an FBI presentation to learn about how talent programs can “expose our faculty, their work and our universities to significant risk.”
Avoiding ‘Bad Actors’
American campuses’ openness to foreign scholars serves both practical and idealistic aims. It’s crucial for tuition revenue, and collaboration across borders has also brought academics in different countries together to advance knowledge and build up faculty in specialized fields.
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Some of this transparency, however, is being tempered in the current political moment, “where there are expectations on managing intellectual property, proprietary information, and operating in a professional environment,” said Peter K. Dorhout, vice president for research at Kansas State University.
Dorhout said the university has issued guidance to faculty on protecting the information they gather as they conduct research.
Sometimes, he said, the advice is simple, reflecting longstanding practices for working with industry. “Don’t tweet pictures of what you’re working on,” like a new chemical reaction, for example, he said. “That wouldn’t be accepted in the private sector or industry … particularly for junior faculty, we don’t want you to get scooped. We want you to be successful.”
Kenneth M. Marcus, the director of the University of Arizona Tech Park, said public research universities’ relationships with China stem from strong relationships with individual academics, departments, and universities.
A few private-industry tenants in the research park are funded by Chinese investors, he said. There is little risk of theft, though, because those companies are not dealing with university intellectual property, he said.
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Often, Marcus said, he considers how any theft could affect other tenants, some of whom have federal contracts. They all must be careful, he said, adding that the park has not had any issues.
“It’s in the news every day — we think about it, it’s in front of us,” he said.
Lorden, at Charlotte, said her university is reminding faculty to declare all appointments by any outside entity. She added that Charlotte needs to more carefully examine memoranda of understanding with outside institutions and centralize international programming so that the institution knows exactly what is going on at the campus.
“You don’t want to turn your students and faculty into informers,” she said. “You want to maintain the intellectual environment that allows for innovation. But are there bad actors out there? I would not be so naïve to say there aren’t.”
U.S.-China relations and collaborations were front of mind this week at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities’ annual meeting, which hosted two panels related to China. On one, an FBI counterintelligence official spoke.
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That panel’s agenda described “uneasiness” from U.S. national security officials on higher education’s links with Chinese individual and organizations. “Our universities have caught the attention of policy makers as vulnerable entry points for the Chinese government.”
‘Second-Class Citizens’
Mary D. Millsaps, Purdue University’s research information assurance officer, said that department heads and top administrators now encourage faculty to consider the risks and rewards of researching in China when they weigh outside appointments.
“What is the benefit to you, or to Purdue, if you do this?” she asked, adding that conversations about how higher education can navigate these fraying relationships have intensified in the last six months.
Millsaps recognized that it’s hard to protect against a threat that is so nebulous. No one new regulation, like stricter export controls, can protect a university against intellectual-property theft, she said.
She said universities must be cognizant of the issue without creating “second-class citizens” on campus, warning against institutions cutting themselves off from global research collaborations.
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Other campus leaders, too, say that a major risk of pulling back on working with institutions in China is that American research dominance will suffer.
David W. Leebron, president of Rice University, said in an interview in The Chronicle’s offices that while the university wants to cooperate with federal guidance, it does not want to compromise its values.
The issue is “complex,” he said, and affects nearly “every kind of relationship that we have.”