Latitudes

A law that could restrict graduate students from China, Iran is challenged in court

The students, who attend Florida International University, said the law jeopardizes their academic careers, while the professor, who teaches at the University of Florida, said he can no longer recruit the most talented research assistants, which slows his work.

The foreign-influence law, passed last year, limits research and academic exchanges with seven countries, which also include Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. All offers of graduate assistantships and research fellowships to candidates from those countries must be approved by the Florida Board of Governors — even if the candidates have already met federal visa requirements. It “presumptively prohibits” their academic employment, the lawsuit charges.

The measure’s passage alarmed faculty members in the state who said its provisions could handicap their efforts to attract talented graduate students. Chinese students make up the largest group of international students at Florida colleges and nationally; graduate programs, particularly in the sciences, rely heavily on students from abroad. More than half of the doctoral degrees in fields linked to critical and emerging technologies, such as engineering and computer and information sciences, go to student-visa holders.

On Tuesday, professors, students, and educational and advocacy groups held a rally to protest the law, known as SB 846, on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, where the Board of Governors was meeting.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami, said that SB 846 is unconstitutional and overrides federal authority for immigration, national security, and foreign affairs. The court filing also calls the law biased, comparing it to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States. It “explicitly discriminates based upon alienage,” the suit said.

The two student plaintiffs, Zhipeng Yin and Zhen Guo, are both doctoral students from China at Florida International, in Miami.

Yin, a student in computer and information sciences, was offered a graduate assistantship, beginning in December 2023, that included a tuition waiver, health-insurance coverage, and an annual stipend of $27,510. He signed a 13-month lease, but in January, the university told him his assistantship would be deferred, pending the board’s approval. Because his tuition waiver is dependent on the assistantship, he is paying out-of-pocket to remain in the doctoral program.

Guo was accepted to the graduate program in materials engineering at Florida International and received a similar assistantship offer that was rescinded after he had already moved to the United States. The lawsuit notes that Guo, who is also paying his own tuition, is not allowed access to a research laboratory, which is critical to his Ph.D. work.

The third plaintiff, Zhengfei Guan, is an associate professor of food and resource economics at the University of Florida. The law has “essentially made it impossible” for Guan, a Chinese citizen and a legal U.S. resident, to hire graduate assistants or postdoctoral candidates from the countries of concern, the lawsuit said.

When Guan, whose research focuses on threats to Florida’s citrus crop, advertised for graduate and postdoctoral researchers, he received 18 applications, all from international students. Three had earned degrees from universities in China and two from Iran.

After a four-month delay as a result of the new restrictions, Guan’s top candidate, a postdoc from China, withdrew to accept a competing offer at an institution outside Florida due to SB 846’s “discriminatory impact against individuals from China,” according to the court challenge.

In addition to legal action, a rally on a Florida campus

In their lawsuit, all three plaintiffs said they are not members of the Chinese government or of the Chinese Communist Party.

A spokeswoman for the Board of Governors said that the higher-education oversight body does not comment on pending litigation.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of law at Cornell University who specializes in immigration law, questioned SB 846’s legality. “The U.S. constitution provides due process and equal protection to everyone in the U.S., not just citizens,” he wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “This Florida law clearly violates those rights by barring certain international students and professors from conducting academic research.”

Yale-Loehr noted that a federal appeals court recently blocked another Florida law — which banned Chinese citizens, including graduate students and professors, from buying property in the state — because it would violate federal law. “I am confident that a federal court will void this Florida law on the same grounds,” he said.

The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance.

Advocates for academic freedom and for international students and researchers were among those speaking out against the law at the University of Florida rally. About 25 local groups put together the event, which also drew support from national organizations like the Asian American Scholar Forum.

Gisela Perez Kusakawa, the group’s executive director, said it was important to “draw a line” to protest the law, which she said could have ramifications for diversity and the foreign talent pipeline across the country, especially if other states passed similar measures. “It’s not just a fight here in Florida,” she said.

Jiangeng Xue, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Florida and one of the event organizers, said that while his own department had recommended several promising doctoral candidates from countries affected by the law, he does not expect that the university would be able to offer them assistantships in the current graduate-admissions cycle. The appeals process to the Board of Governors is unworkable, he said. “It’s very depressing.”

Still, Xue, who is president of the Florida Chinese Faculty Association, said he was cheered by turnout from colleges across the state for the rally. “If we’re not vocal, if we don’t fight, nothing’s going to change,” he said.

Science panel urges caution in new research-security controls

The National Science Foundation, or NSF, commissioned the report as it prepares to put in place measures, mandated by Congress, to keep sensitive research from being poached by foreign governments.

In its report, the panel, which advises the government on key science and technology issues, reaffirmed the longstanding federal policy to make research without obvious security or commercial purposes as unrestricted as possible. Some officials had advocated for narrowing what research can be shared openly.

“International collaborations with those who share the ideals of openness and transparency benefit all participants,” the report said. Formal controls on research could have “unintended consequences,” such as increasing the costs of doing research, inhibiting competitive development of new technologies, and discouraging some scientists from taking part in federally funded research projects.

The China Initiative — the federal investigation into academic ties to China, carried out between 2018 and 2022 — is feared to have had a chilling effect on international research collaboration. Some scientists, particularly those who are Chinese or Asian American, have said they would be hesitant to work with colleagues in China or to apply for federal grants, out of concern that they could be racially profiled.

But JASON also acknowledged that the global research environment has changed, making it no longer possible to see research on a binary, classified or restricted. In particular, the report noted that the government of China may not be hewing to global research norms, directing fundamental research to military and security needs and restricting the flow of information out of the country.

Rather than trying to maintain a comprehensive list of sensitive research areas, the report recommended that federal science agencies adopt a “dynamic approach” to deal with potential security risks, assessing the sensitivity of individual research proposals. As part of the process, the NSF could work with researchers themselves as well as stakeholder groups to tailor project-specific security requirements.

In a statement, the NSF said it was reviewing the recommendations and would have a new security-review process by May 24.

Tune in!

Also this week, I’ll be part of an online discussion, Collaborators and Competitors: China and the U.S. in the Current Geopolitics of International Higher Education, sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education. I’ll be joined by William Lacy, of the University of California at Davis, and Shanshan Jiang-Brittan, of Berkeley, to talk about how student mobility, research cooperation, and other forms of Sino-American academic collaboration have been complicated by geopolitics, domestic political pressures, concerns about academic freedom, and other issues.

The free webinar will be held at noon PT on Thursday, March 28, and registration is required.

Around the globe

The U.S. government will extend emergency relief for Burmese students on F-1 visas who are experiencing severe economic hardship because of the armed conflict and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, allowing them to work more hours and take a reduced course load.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that all public colleges will be exempt from paying the asylum-program fee as part of a slate of visa-fee increases set to take effect on April 1. For background, read this letter from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, which had pushed for clarification because colleges are nonprofit employers. A lawsuit has been filed to try to block the new fees from taking effect.

A House committee has approved legislation that would give Congress greater oversight of future efforts to enter, extend, or renew science and technology agreements with China. Meanwhile, the chairman of another congressional panel announced a governmentwide investigation into Chinese efforts to influence American education and research, among other sectors.

China produces almost half of the world’s top artificial-intelligence researchers, as the country has invested in more undergraduate programs in the high-demand field.

Officials in Tibet are trying to lure investment by promising parents that their children will be able to take the gaokao, China’s competitive college-entrance exam. The region benefits from preferential-admission policies, meaning that students from Tibet with lower scores have a better chance of winning a place.

South Korea’s state auditor alleged that an “education cartel” was selling questions on the country’s high-stakes college exam.

Researchers in Russia fear that a fifth term in office for President Vladimir Putin could mean more scientific isolation.

Britain’s higher-education minister is concerned about antisemitism and the “ghettoization” of Jewish students on campuses.

Some British universities could face financial problems because of a decline in foreign students, caused in part by steep currency devaluation in Nigeria.

A college dropout who is Ireland’s higher-education minister is likely to be the country’s next prime minister.

Zimbabwe deported four researchers working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, accusing the academics of spying.

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.