Latitudes

Panel recommends best practices for managing risk at foreign-funded cultural centers

A federal advisory panel on Confucius Institutes and other foreign-funded language and cultural centers is recommending ways that colleges, the U.S. government, and, unusually, accrediting agencies can mitigate the risks of overseas influence on American campuses.

Accreditors should review the governance and academic freedom of such centers as part of their regular accreditation process, the group proposed in a report released on Tuesday.

The report is the work of a commission of national experts assembled by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense. Earlier this year, the panel drafted waiver criteria to allow colleges to have Confucius Institutes while still receiving defense research grants; the department largely adopted the suggested criteria, which could permit colleges to circumvent a prohibition on hosting the Chinese-government-funded centers imposed by Congress.

The commission’s first charge was narrow, said Philip J. Hanlon, the group’s chair and, until he stepped down this month, president of Dartmouth College. But the latest report allowed its members — which include college leaders, research and international-education administrators, and experts on China and national security — “to step back and reflect on what are the risks and rewards” of foreign-funded language and cultural institutes, Hanlon said.

Access to such programming can expand colleges’ capacity for language instruction and give students a more-nuanced understanding of other cultures. That’s of broader benefit to the United States in an increasingly interconnected global economy, Hanlon said. “They really are an economic and national-security advantage to the U.S.”

But these centers — and in particular, Confucius Institutes, which have been a key element of China’s soft diplomacy — also carry risks, to academic freedom, institutional governance, and national security. Policymakers have been critical of Confucius Institutes because of concerns about Chinese influence on American campuses, as well as over who controls curriculum and hiring at the centers.

Other foreign-funded cultural and language programming — such as the United Kingdom’s British Council, Germany’s Goethe Institute, France’s Alliance Française, and Taiwan’s Huayu Bilingual Exchanges of Selected Talent program — have not been controversial.

Hanlon said it may not be possible to eliminate all risk, but the report contains several recommendations, including:

• American colleges should develop and institute policies and procedures for identifying, assessing, and mitigating risk associated with having foreign-funded language and cultural centers. They should disseminate and clearly explain such policies to administrators and faculty and staff members. And institutions should consider the potential issues of having partnerships with certain countries and consider putting in place extra vetting for “countries of concern.” Asked for examples of best practices, Hanlon pointed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has a thorough process for reviewing all international engagement, singling out projects with China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia for additional scrutiny.
  
• The U.S. government should create a publicly available clearinghouse of research-security information and resources for colleges. Federal agencies should also adopt a consistent and harmonized approach for the reporting of foreign gifts and contracts to American colleges.
  
• Higher-education accrediting agencies should expand their reviews to include foreign-funded language and cultural centers. Accreditors have largely not been part of recent public debate over foreign influence on campus. But the agencies already have standards for governance and academic freedom as part of their assessments, so they are well positioned to consider some of the key concerns raised about Confucius Institutes and other centers, Hanlon said.

Related: Congress could once again use an annual defense-authorization bill to deal with concerns about foreign influence. A version of the legislation under consideration in the Senate would limit or prohibit the Department of Defense from funding institutions that “contract with Chinese or Russian institutions which engage in intellectual property theft or are linked to the Chinese or Russian military or intelligence services.”

Meanwhile, an amendment included in the House bill would require applications for defense research funding to disclose extensive information about researchers’ past and present ties to foreign entities. The must-pass legislation has previously been a vehicle for lawmakers to enact research-security provisions — including the prohibition against defense grants going to colleges with Confucius Institutes.

International applications, study abroad see gains in new survey

Global student mobility is returning, with majorities of colleges in a new snapshot survey from the Institute of International Education reporting increases in both international-student applications and study-abroad participation.

Six in 10 responding institutions said applications from overseas were up for the 2023 academic year, while another 30 percent reported that they were holding steady. And more than 80 percent of those surveyed said they expected that participation in outbound study abroad would increase in the coming academic year.

The institute shared a preview of its findings from the survey, which was conducted between April 27 and May 19. A full report on the survey will be published on Friday and available here.

Like all good data, these latest figures both provide fresh insights into a changing environment for global mobility and spark new questions. Here are two data points that interested me:

More than half of all students going abroad are taking part in faculty-led programs. About a third are studying through exchanges with foreign universities or longer academic programs, while the rest are participating in overseas internships, practicums, research, or other opportunities, according to surveyed institutions.

The institute’s annual Open Doors report has documented a shift over the years to more short-term programs, many of which are led by professors. A number of study-abroad providers I’ve spoken with recently have told me that they’ve seen a swifter post-pandemic rebound in faculty-led trips than in other programming. Among the reasons, they speculate, are a greater comfort level among some students in going abroad with professors they know and students trying to pack in as many experiences as they can after Covid disruptions.

Julie Baer, a research specialist for the institute, noted that the survey found that students at certain types of colleges were more likely to participate in faculty-led programs, including 92 percent of community-college students and 62 percent of those at master’s institutions. My question: Will we see a sustained shift to faculty-led programs?

Colleges named India as their top overseas recruiting priority. That’s no surprise — the number of visas issued to Indian students surged last year. More notable: Students from Vietnam and Brazil and international students at American high schools ranked higher among respondents as recruitment priorities than China, long the runaway No. 1 source of foreign students in the United States.

The survey, however, found differences in recruitment priorities by academic level, with respondents placing China behind India at the graduate level. What’s more, the Chinese government only lifted its Covid border restrictions, which required international travelers to quarantine, in January. China could become a more-prominent target as travel becomes easier for both college recruiters and prospective students.

Still, Mirka Martel, head of research, evaluation, and learning at the institute, said she expected India to continue to be a strong market, thanks to a large college-age population, growing middle class, and limited capacity in its own universities. It’s possible India could outpace China in enrollments at American colleges within a few years, she said. My question: Is this a new India era and the end of the China boom?

The 527 institutions of varying types that took part in the survey represent 45 percent of all international students on American campuses and 51 percent of Americans who study abroad.

Meanwhile, a report from the Council of Graduate Schools released last week documents the rise of India at the graduate level. Nearly four in 10 overseas applicants to American master’s, doctoral, and graduate-certificate programs for the fall of 2022 were from India, according to a survey of graduate schools.

First-time enrollments of graduate students from India rose by 22 percent last fall, while those from China dropped by 11 percent. Iran and sub-Saharan Africa also had large percentage increases in new graduate enrollments.

After a deep decline during the pandemic, first-time international enrollments in American graduate programs are now above the fall of 2018 levels, the council reported.

Court dismisses visa case brought by Chinese students

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a Trump-era executive order that denied student visas to graduates of Chinese universities that are said to have ties with the Chinese military or national-security agencies.

The judge ruled that the order, Presidential Proclamation 10043, was in keeping with presidential powers over immigration, thus permitting the president to deny entry to foreign nationals when admitting them to the United States “would be detrimental to the national interest.” Government officials have said the policy was needed to protect American national security and intellectual property.

Although the order was issued by the previous administration, the Biden administration had asked the court to throw out the lawsuit, which was brought by a group of Chinese students affected by the policy and by a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who is director of graduate-student admissions for the institution’s mathematics department.

The professor, Yuliy Baryshnikov, said the policy has hurt his ability to recruit graduate students from China. Current students may also be unable to return home to China out of fear they could be prevented from re-entering the United States.

The Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University has estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 graduate students and researchers, most in scientific and technological fields, are affected annually by the order, which was put in place on June 1, 2020. In his opinion, Colin S. Bruce, a U.S. district judge in Illinois, noted that 700 to 1,300 visas were denied by American consulates under the proclamation between its implementation and August 2021, but that figure may not include students who decided not to apply for a U.S. visa because of fear of rejection.

In his ruling, Bruce dismissed the plaintiffs’ argument that the policy was discriminatory based on Trump’s previous anti-China rhetoric, saying that the president’s language did not invalidate it if there was a legitimate government interest in instituting such a policy.

Around the globe

The United States and India pledged to expand research partnerships and student and scholarly exchanges between universities during a meeting last week in Washington between President Biden and Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister.

An Association of American Universities task force on U.S.-Indian academic collaboration has recommended that the two countries establish joint research institutes focused on key scientific and societal challenges.

Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, is among 20 college and public-education leaders named to a council to advise the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on academic issues.

Civil-rights groups are suing to block a Florida law from taking effect that would bar Chinese citizens, including professors, students, and researchers, from buying a home in the state.

Rhode Island will develop a strategy to help refugees get college degrees and work-force training, with support from the National Association of System Heads. I previously wrote about other efforts to support refugee education.

Visa holders seeking to change to international-student status will now qualify for faster premium processing.

The National Science Foundation has released new guidelines about how it will use analytics to spot disclosure failures by grant applicants. I talked with the agency’s chief of research security strategy and policy about using big data and other efforts to improve research security.

Tel Aviv University has removed the name of the Sackler family from its medical school, the latest higher-education institution around the globe to distance itself from the family that owned the opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma.

Students at Tehran’s University of Art have called for a nationwide boycott of exams in protest of the government’s crackdown on students for violating rules related to wearing hijabs, or head scarves.

International students in Taiwan were trafficked into low-paying factory jobs, a government watchdog group reported.

Reinvigorating student exchanges could be an important first step in improving relations between the United States and China, this commentary argues.

And finally …

People often talk about the transformative nature of travel. But “travel is a boomerang,” Agnes Callard writes in The New Yorker. “It drops you right where you started.” Callard’s argument: Travel, and specifically tourism, is in the main about being a spectator. Travelers engage in activities and take in sights without fundamentally having been affected by what they’ve seen and done, she says. “Travel is fun, so it is not mysterious that we like it. What is mysterious is why we imbue it with a vast significance, an aura of virtue.”

What do you make of Callard’s contention? You can send your responses — and your story tips and feedback — to me 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. Thanks for reading.