Latitudes

U.S. government to review research security

Is the U.S. government preparing to narrow what research can be shared openly?

Science reports that the National Science Foundation, or NSF, is poised to revisit the classification system for federally funded research. Specifically, NSF has asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to hold a workshop this year on factors affecting whether research is considered open or classified.

For decades, the default has been to make fundamental research — that is, research without obvious security or commercial uses — as open as possible. That’s been the case even during the Cold War. Current federal research-security policy, in fact, dates to the 1980s and has a focus on putting “high walls around a very narrow set of technologies,” leaving the rest of research unrestricted.

Just three years ago, an independent advisory commission reviewed the policy and concluded it did not need to be updated.

But as I’ve written, geopolitics and national-security concerns have led to pressure to narrow what findings can be shared, especially with researchers in other countries.

China has sought to build up its own research capacity, leading to concerns that the Chinese government might be exploiting the openness of American campuses to poach intellectual property. The goal of the recently concluded China Initiative was to root out academic and economic espionage by China, although prosecutions brought as part of the government investigation have focused not on the sharing of scientific secrets but on issues such as researchers’ failure to disclose China ties on federal grant applications.

There has also been growth in recent years of a third category of research, known as controlled but unclassified, subject to some government restrictions. Because it has never been clearly defined, controlled but unclassified research is a gray area, leading to confusion.

Rebecca Keiser, chief of research security for the NSF, told Science that goal of the workshop would be to assess whether the longstanding research-security policy needs to be revisited. “It will help us reflect on where we are now and talk with the community about ways to maintain openness and security.”

Still, the idea of new limits on scientific openness is likely to get strong pushback from people in the higher-education and scientific communities, who worry they could diminish the United States’ strength as an intellectual and research powerhouse. “Openness is axiomatic for scientists,” John Mester, chief executive of the Universities Research Association, a consortium that runs several government research facilities, said to Science. “But its value has not been articulated in a convincing way to the outside community.”

Commerce Department announces plan to protect research

The NSF policy review is not the only effort to revisit research-security policy. Congress is considering competitiveness legislation that would authorize new investment in research but would also impose tough new disclosure requirements and restrictions on both universities and individual researchers engaged in overseas scientific collaborations.

In a letter sent to congressional leaders last week, dozens of higher-education and scientific organizations called on Congress to pass the measure but noted that the research-security provisions still needed to be “worked out.” Despite reservations, the organizations said the legislation was needed to maintain America’s edge in science and innovation.

The U.S. House and Senate have each passed a version of the bill — the House bill notably includes an exemption from green-card caps for international STEM graduates — but have struggled to agree to final legislation.

And the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a new plan to work with universities to protect potentially sensitive research from theft by foreign agents.

The Academic Outreach Initiative will identify and prioritize universities at highest risk because of the type of research they conduct or because of their foreign ties. Commerce Department agents will be assigned to work with these institutions to prevent unauthorized release or export of sensitive technologies or information.

The department will also offer regular briefings and trainings to these colleges on security risks.

A recent Government Accountability Office report called out the Commerce Department, as well as several other government agencies, for lacking systematic processes to assess universities’ risk and to target education and outreach to those that are the most vulnerable. The Commerce Department regulates the export of sensitive technologies and products.

Matthew S. Axelrod, assistant secretary for export enforcement, announced the new program at the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Attorneys. “The challenges of keeping our academic research environments thriving and our controlled information secure from improper foreign acquisition are significant,” Axelrod told the lawyers’ group.

He said he hoped the effort would “empower colleges and universities to continue to lead the world in research and innovation while at the same time enabling them to better protect themselves against those who would harm our collective national security.”

Report says colleges keep ties with China when Confucius Institutes close

A new report says that when American colleges shut down their Confucius Institutes they continue to maintain ties with the Chinese partners that cosponsored the Chinese-government-funded language and cultural centers.

The National Association of Scholars examined what happened after colleges closed their Confucius Institutes. In at least 64 cases, colleges opened Confucius Institute-like centers under a different name or maintained a close relationship with their Chinese partners, it found. (Typically, Confucius Institute agreements pair American host campuses with a Chinese university partner.)

“In no cases are we sufficiently confident to classify any university as having fully closed its Confucius Institute,” concluded the group, which has long opposed the presence of the centers on American campuses. It based its conclusions on documents obtained through open-records requests as well as interviews and site visits.

The continuing relationships allow China to maintain its influence on American higher education, the association argues.

But some colleges have disputed the report’s conclusions. The University of Montana told The PIE News it no longer has any active agreements with its former Chinese partner. Purdue University said it assesses all overseas agreements for national-security risk.

Confucius Institutes in the United States had proliferated, at one point numbering 118. In the past five years, however, more than 100 have closed or are in the process of doing so, as colleges have come under pressure for hosting the centers. In 2020, Congress prohibited colleges with Confucius Institutes from receiving U.S. Department of Defense research grants.

Around the globe

A proposal to exempt doctoral students in critical STEM fields from numerical limits on immigrant visas and another to prevent colleges with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, or with entities linked to the party, from receiving U.S. Department of Homeland Security grants are among the amendments to the annual defense authorization bill that will be considered by the U.S. House of Representatives. I tweeted out a thread highlighting more amendments related to international education.

The ombudsman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services noted efforts the agency has made to reduce backlogs for international students applying for work authorization but urged it to do more to improve communication with campus officials who administer student visas.

Western universities have cut ties with Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, but similar efforts to isolate China could shock global research networks, a report from King’s College London and Harvard University warns.

New York has shut down Olivet University’s two campuses in the state and the evangelical Christian institution could lose its authorization to enroll international students amid a federal investigation into whether it laundered money for criminals in China and the United States.

Chinese university students were lured into working for a secretive technology company that sought to infiltrate governments, companies, and universities in the United States and other western countries, according to a Financial Times investigation.

An administrator of a global business doctoral program at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities is accused of seeking to undermine an undergraduate student who said she was sexually assaulted by a Chinese businessman taking part in the program.

As Hong Kong’s new chief executive, John Lee will also become chancellor of its eight publicly funded universities, raising concerns about the Beijing-backed leader’s impact on academic freedom.

Several universities in Sri Lanka temporarily closed because of the country’s economic crisis.

The Monterrey Institute of Technology, in Mexico, will spend $100 million to hire 100 top scholars as part of a push for global prominence.

A study examined the communications strategies of American, Canadian, and Chinese colleges during the Covid-19 pandemic and found similarities, such as a centralized response, as well as differences based on local context.

Having a name English speakers have difficulty pronouncing can hurt economics Ph.D.s in the academic job market, new research found.

Applications are open for a professional-development fellowship that helps pay the costs to attend certain international-education conferences.

And finally …

I joined William Kirby, a professor of Chinese history and business at Harvard and the author of a new book, Empire of Ideas: Creating the Modern University, on the Chicago Council of Global Affairs’ Deep Dish podcast. We talked with the host, Brian Hanson, about how American universities achieved their global pre-eminence, why it is threatened, and why it matters. I hope you’ll listen!

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.