Latitudes

New law could subject graduate assistants from China and other “countries of concern” to extra screening

Professors at the University of Florida said the hiring of new graduate assistants, as well as some postdoctoral fellows and other visiting researchers, from the seven countries named in the law have been on hold after it took effect this summer.

And they are concerned that regulatory guidance issued by Florida’s Board of Governors interpreting the statute could mean that the oversight body will have to approve graduate-assistant offers to student-visa holders from the affected countries.

Confusion over the law could affect the university’s ability to recruit top international graduate students, at least during the current admissions cycle, faculty members fear.

A large share of the University of Florida’s doctoral students come from China and Iran, particularly in science and technology fields. A letter to Ben Sasse, the university’s president, and other administrators, signed by several hundred professors, noted that every fall, more than 1,000 students from affected countries enroll in graduate programs at Florida.

“If we can’t hire, we could lose an entire year,” said Jiangeng Xue, a professor of materials science and engineering. He estimated that about 40 percent of graduate students in his department are Chinese.

Xue said such restrictions would run counter to university leaders’ ambitions to rise in academic prestige and college rankings. “If we are losing out on this rich talent, then we are already behind.”

The measure, SB 846, passed Florida’s legislature unanimously. It restricts public colleges in the state from working with or accepting grants from “countries of concern,” without approval from the Board of Governors. Colleges are prevented from soliciting or accepting gifts or having academic partnerships, including exchange and study-abroad programs, with the named countries, which also include Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela.

Institutions that fail to comply with the law could lose state performance-based funding. The governing board can grant exemptions if it views foreign partnerships as valuable to students and colleges and not “detrimental” to national security.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and presidential hopeful, signed the law in May, saying it would “root out Chinese influence in Florida’s education system.”

In recent years, elected officials on both the state and federal levels have increased their scrutiny of higher education’s foreign academic and research partnerships, particularly with China. Florida passed legislation, in 2021, mandating disclosure of gifts and contracts to colleges from countries of concern, as well requiring colleges to monitor overseas travel.

Uncertainty over law could disadvantage Florida in recruiting foreign grad students

But when the Board of Governors released its interpretation of the new law in September, it said that institutional research-integrity offices must screen foreign applicants for all research and research-related support positions, including undergraduate and graduate students. In separate guidance issued the following month, it said colleges must submit all requests to hire a “foreign principal for academic, administrative, [or] research purposes,” or as research scholars from countries of concern, first to the institution’s Board of Trustees and then to Florida’s Board of Governors for approval.

Meera Sitharam, a professor of computer and information science and engineering and president of the University of Florida’s chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, said she has been told in meetings with university officials that they interpret the guidance to mean that all new graduate assistants on F and J student visas who are from, and currently residing in, the affected countries will be subject to screening by the governing boards. She said she was told that the vetting will not apply to students from countries such as China and Iran who are already in the United States.

In a written statement to The Chronicle, Steve Orlando, the university’s associate vice president for communications, said that the law “restricts agreements including employment contracts for persons whose domicile is in a foreign country of concern. It does not prohibit the enrollment of students from foreign countries of concern or impact scholarships.”

Orlando added, “The university’s obligation is to comply with the restriction, and the administration has communicated the law clearly to deans and center directors.”

He did not respond directly to questions about whether applicants for graduate assistantships would need to be screened or if such hires are now on hold.

Danaya C. Wright, a professor of law and chair of the University of Florida’s Faculty Senate, said the “stringent review process” put in place by the Board of Governors “makes is virtually impossible to have the kind of open-door relationships we have had in the past with students from these countries.”

While the university can admit such graduate students, it may be difficult to employ them as assistants, Wright said. “The law just doesn’t give us much flexibility on this subject.”

A spokesperson for the Board of Governors declined to comment, pointing to its September interpretation of the law. A spokeswoman for Florida State University also said the law would affect its hiring of graduate assistants.

Both Sitharam and Xue, who is president of the University of Florida’s Chinese faculty association, believe that the university and the Board of Governors may be going beyond the original legislative language in interpreting the law in a more far-reaching way. The law makes no mention of graduate students or assistantships.

And both said there was an urgent need for the university to issue a formal policy, given that graduate programs are in the thick of the admission season. Programs typically make offers to doctoral applicants, including assistantships, in the next four to six weeks, and delays caused by screening requirements could put Florida at a disadvantage compared to other colleges seeking to recruit top international students.

Nationally, one in five graduate students is from overseas, and their enrollments grew 10 percent in the last academic year, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

Faculty members are being given different messages, the Florida professors said. Some departments have sent emails to their faculty members telling them to halt offers for graduate assistantships, while Xue said he was told in a departmental faculty meeting on Tuesday that a policy was being drafted.

“It’s just chaos,” said Sitharam, who said she is also concerned that the Board of Governors’ guidance could require approval of routine faculty collaborations such as writing an academic paper or sharing data with a colleague in a country of concern.

Xue, who originally came to the United States from China as a graduate student himself, noted that student-visa applicants are already subject to vetting, including security screening, by the federal government. He also questioned whether a policy that applies only to graduate assistants from certain countries would violate federal law forbidding discrimination based on country of origin.

The restrictions could be especially detrimental for the many faculty members recently hired by the university as part of efforts to improve its institutional profile, Xue said, because they are trying to build up their research labs. “These graduate students are scholars,” he said. “They’re assets, not liabilities, to the state of Florida.”

Zhengfei Guan, an associate professor of food and resource economics at the University of Florida, said his offer to a postdoc in China has been on hold since August. In email messages he shared with The Chronicle, officials with the university’s research-integrity office cited SB 846 and the Board of Governors’ guidance for the hiring delay.

Guan said he does not view the new law in isolation but as part of a host of measures that he said discriminate against Chinese students and scholars, such as another bill passed this year that bans Chinese citizens from purchasing property in certain parts of the state. Taken together, such policies could deter students and scholars from countries such as China from coming to the University of Florida and other colleges in the state.

“I know many of my fellow Chinese professors feel the climate is so hostile that they would be much better off simply voting with their feet,” Guan said. But although he called the law part of a “dark chapter” for Chinese and Chinese American scholars, he said he intends to stay in Florida.

The Fulbright legacy

The Fulbright Program, the United States’ premier international-exchange program, celebrated its 75th anniversary with a gala at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C.

The November 2021 event, which was livestreamed around the globe, featured scholars, artists, public officials, and journalists talking about the impact of the program on their lives.

But one person’s name was missing from the festivities: the program’s eponymous J. William Fulbright, the late senator from Arkansas.

Fulbright created the exchange program, which sends Americans abroad and brings students and scholars from more than 160 countries to the United States, as a way to advance international engagement and mutual understanding.

Yet it’s not his only legacy. During his three decades in the U.S. Senate, Fulbright repeatedly voted against civil-rights legislation. In 1956, he signed the Southern Manifesto, which opposed court-ordered integration.

The two sides of the former senator exemplify what his biographer, Randall B. Woods, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, calls the “paradox of J. William Fulbright.” As American colleges have in recent years grappled with their record on race, some in the international-education and foreign-policy communities question why there hasn’t been more open discussion by the exchange program of what Gerardo L. Blanco, an associate professor of educational leadership and higher education at Boston College, calls Fulbright’s “painful history.”

“We need to have public debate,” said Blanco, one of the authors of a paper examining the de-emphasis of Fulbright in the exchange program’s branding. “And I’m unsettled that we didn’t have that as the international-education community.”

You can read my piece examining the controversy over Fulbright’s legacy and whether the scholarship he founded should continue to carry his name. As always, nonsubscribers who register for a free Chronicle account can read two articles a month. Your readership supports our journalism.

And share your thoughts with me at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. I may publish some responses in a future newsletter.

Around the globe

The U.S. Department of Education released a final rule that would eliminate a penalty on applicants for the prestigious Fulbright-Hays award for research abroad if they are native or heritage speakers of a foreign language spoken in the country in which they plan to work.

A group of Republican senators said in a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice that they have “serious concerns” that the Chinese government is using Chinese Students and Scholars Associations to influence American colleges and asked what steps the department has taken to investigate the organizations.

The U.S. House passed a bill that increases reporting and oversight of foreign gifts and contracts to American colleges. Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate.

Defense-policy legislation expected to be approved by Congress later this week does not contain new research-security provisions, such as tough disclosure requirements for American and foreign scientists, that were in earlier drafts.

A new survey found that eight in 10 scholars who work on and teach about the Middle East self-censor when they speak about the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Associations that represent English-language programs have announced their support for a coalition advocating for a coordinated national strategy for international students.

International students account for 71 percent of full-time graduate students in computer and information sciences and 73 percent in electrical and computer engineering, according to a report that examined American competitiveness.

The Russian government has put Masha Gessen, a Russian American writer for The New Yorker and a professor of journalism at the City University of New York, on a wanted list after opening a criminal case against them on charges of spreading false information about the Russian army.

Germany is seeking to recruit and retain more international students by providing “tailored support” during their studies and transition to the workplace.

Ukraine may have lost 20 percent of its scientific research capacity — the time spent by scientists on research activities — as a consequence of the war with Russia, according to a paper based on a survey of Ukrainian scientists.

Nicaragua’s General Assembly has amended higher-education law to strip universities in the country of their autonomy and put their management under control of a government oversight board.

Universities in the Philippines were encouraged to increase security measures after a blast at a church service on a college campus killed four people.

It was great talking with THESIS Podcast: Trends in Higher Education Systems in International Spheres about the latest developments in international-student mobility. I especially appreciated the perceptive questions and insights from Kelly Davis and her colleagues.

And finally …

Some of Scotland’s best-known folk-music stars are protesting a plan by the University of Aberdeen to cut its Gaelic-language major.

In a scenario that will be familiar to readers on this side of the Atlantic, the Scottish university has proposed eliminating degree courses in French, German, and Spanish, as well as Gaelic, in order to deal with a funding crunch. Instead, modern languages would be offered as electives or as part of joint degrees with other majors.

The move to cut Gaelic, which Aberdeen has offered since its founding in 1495, has alarmed scholars, politicians, and Gaelic musicians, who have called it “cultural vandalism.” One singer, Iona Fyfe, told The Guardian, “Language is culture; it is our way of understanding different customs, traditions and cultures. We are all culturally richer for these degree courses.”

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 X or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.