Latitudes

Georgia Tech cuts ties to a blacklisted Chinese university

Georgia Institute of Technology will sever ties with a blacklisted Chinese university, ending degree programs. It’s the latest American college to retreat from an academic partnership in China.

The university will pull out of the Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute, which it established in 2016 with Tianjin University and the municipal government of Shenzhen, a city in southern China.

The announcement comes after congressional Republicans opened an inquiry into whether Georgia Tech’s collaboration with Tianjin University compromised national security, charges that Steven McLaughlin, the university’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, called baseless.

In an interview, McLaughlin said Georgia Tech had conducted a lengthy review of the partnership, and that the decision was prompted by geopolitics and proposed legislation likely to bar colleges that work with Chinese universities with ties to the Chinese military or intelligence agencies from receiving U.S. Department of Defense grants. Georgia Tech is among the top academic recipients of federal research funding.

Georgia Tech is not the first American institution to exit a Chinese partnership due to political pressures. Dozens of colleges shut down Confucius Institutes after Congress said those with the Chinese-funded language and cultural centers would be blocked from receiving defense grants. Although a waiver process is now in place, there are almost no Confucius Institutes remaining on American campuses.

Other institutions, like Alfred University, in New York, have ended international programming amid congressional investigations. State restrictions are also spurring such decoupling — Florida International University closed Chinese dual-degree programs because of a 2023 state law restricting partnerships between public colleges and China and six other “countries of concern.”

And a U.S. government investigation into academic and economic espionage known as the China Initiative has had a chilling effect on research collaboration between the two countries. The U.S. House of Representatives plans to consider legislation this week that could revive the probe (see below).

In Georgia Tech’s case, three legislative panels — the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and the Senate Armed Services Committee — said in May they were opening an inquiry into the university’s relationship with Tianjin University.

In a letter to Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech, the committees posed 19 separate requests for information. McLaughlin said that many of the concerns raised were unfounded or based on misunderstandings. For example, the letter suggested that Georgia Tech had failed to report $250 million from the Shenzhen government for construction of the institute, in China’s Silicon Valley, on federal disclosure forms. The money was not a gift to Georgia Tech, but went toward the construction of a building that would have been leased to the institute, a separate entity, and thus was not subject U.S. reporting requirements.

Likewise, lawmakers said that the Tianjin partnership was troubling because Georgia Tech conducts research on national-security issues for the Defense Department. Georgia Tech never conducted any sensitive or defense-funded research at the institute, which was a teaching, not a research, site, McLaughlin said.

He said Georgia Tech had responded to the committees’ questions and had not been asked for more information. In a written statement, Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican and chairman of the China select committee, thanked the university for its “productive engagement” with the investigation.

“I commend Georgia Tech’s decision to prioritize U.S. national security and take the responsible step of shutting down the Georgia Tech-Shenzhen Institute,” Moolenaar said. “It is my hope that other American institutions of higher learning who have similar arrangements with Chinese institutions will pay close attention here and likewise think hard about the impact their pursuits in China are having on America’s long-term national security.”

An “extremely difficult” decision

McLaughlin said Georgia Tech, which includes international education among its core institutional goals, did not end the partnership lightly. “I know we always say that a decision was difficult,” he said, “but this really was extremely difficult.”

Such overseas relationships provide “a front-row seat to one of the most exciting places in the world. It’s an experience we think our students should have because of the world they are going to live in,” he said.

Georgia Tech had been re-evaluating the agreement since the U.S. Department of Commerce placed Tianjin University on its “entity list” of foreign institutions that raise national-security concerns in December 2020. The university hired an outside lawyer to review the partnership and had slowed expansion of the institute, capping enrollment at 300 students, 10 percent of the original goal. It began to consider options for an exit plan, McLaughlin said.

The final decision was made because of pending legislation that would prohibit defense grants from going to American colleges that have collaborations with universities on the entity list. “We zeroed in on the fact that this is inevitable,” McLaughlin said of the restrictions.

Because Georgia Tech awards its own degrees in China, it is drafting a “teach-out” plan to ensure that enrolled and admitted students will be able to complete their education to comply with accreditation requirements. The institute enrolled a mix of Chinese, American, and other foreign students in master’s degree programs in analytics, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, environmental engineering, and industrial design. It also hosted Georgia Tech students studying abroad.

Sixty percent of Georgia Tech students have some sort of international experience, including overseas study and experiential learning.

Congress takes up education bills during “China Week”

Congress is taking up legislation to restart the China Initiative as well as a “fatally flawed” bill that could force colleges to choose between partnerships with Chinese universities and federal funding for disaster relief and other Homeland Security programs.

The two measures are part of a series of bills aimed at countering Chinese influence and power to be voted on by the U.S. House during what has been dubbed “China Week.”

In a vote Tuesday afternoon, lawmakers approved legislation would restrict American colleges that host Confucius Institutes or have relationships with other “Chinese entities of concern” from receiving funds from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It “is a critical step in stopping the [Chinese Communist Party]’s reach into the American education system,” said Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, who was leading Republican support for the bill.

It is meant to echo earlier legislation that barred colleges with the Chinese language centers from receiving Defense Department funds. But it differs in several ways that could hamstring institutions, opponents said during floor debate on Tuesday.

For one, the bill is so broadly written that it appears to define “entities of concern” as any program that has any relationship with the Chinese government, a definition that would include Chinese universities, nearly all of which are public institutions, said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat of Mississippi. It also does not allow for a waiver that would allow colleges to petition to receive homeland-security grants while hosting the institutes if they put in place certain safeguards, a provision in the earlier bill.

The language appears to apply to American colleges that have student exchanges, study abroad, joint research, visiting scholars, and other forms of academic collaboration with China. And it would block them from receiving all homeland-security funds, including those awarded in times of emergencies such as fires, flooding, and hurricanes, not just federal research grants.

Thompson said he supported the “spirit” of the legislative proposal but said that it “deems every Chinese university a threat without regard to national-security concerns.” Rather than crack down on Chinese influence on campus, he said, it “just makes universities decide between” federal funds and international-education programming.

In a letter to House leaders, the American Council on Education and other higher-education organization said they “strongly oppose” the bill.

The letter also decried legislation to revive the China Initiative, renamed as the “CCP Initiative,” within the U.S. Department of Justice. The previous inquiry into scholars’ undisclosed China ties — begun under the Trump administration and shut down in 2022 — resulted in few convictions but had a “deep and disturbing” impact on American research and American researchers, the letter said.

The push to bring back the China Intiative was criticized by civil-rights and science groups. “The China Initiative was a failed program that fueled racial animosity, xenophobia, and suspicion,” the Committee of 100, a group of Chinese American leaders, said in a written statement. The committee pointed to a survey it supported that found Chinese and Chinese American scientists were pulling back on international research collaborations amid fears they were being racially profiled and watched by the U.S. government.

“Reimplementing this program,” the committee said its statement, “would send shockwaves of fear across the [Asian American and Pacific Islander] community.”

Republican lawmakers have repeatedly tried to reinstate the China Initiative, saying that the danger of Chinese influence efforts and theft of American intellectual property remains high. “It’s the greatest threat of our lifetime,” said Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican of Texas and the bill’s sponsor, said during legislative debate. “Republicans want to do something.”

It’s unclear if either measure will pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Around the globe

Nineteen historically Black colleges were named as national leaders for their work with the Fulbright Program, the flagship U.S. international-exchange program.

Women in developed countries are more likely than men to earn college degrees, according to a report on educational outcomes from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Some foreign professors at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, North Korea’s only private international university, have returned after teaching remotely for four years because of the pandemic.

China’s top intelligence agency is warning college students that they could be lured into spying for foreign governments by “handsome men and beautiful women.”

The selection of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who spent time teaching in and leading exchange programs to China, as the vice-presidential nominee has prompted this China expert to consider whether Americans students and academics should travel to the country.

NAFSA: Association of International Educators announced a strategic partnership with ICEF, an organization that screens and accredits foreign recruitment agents, to expand and diversify international-student enrollment in the United States.

And finally …

Students are back on college campuses, many refreshed from visits with family and friends back home. Not so for international students displaced by war and conflict in Afghanistan, Gaza, Ukraine, and other regions.

“Returning home would be nice, but you cannot predict whether your home will be there in a couple of years,” a Ukrainian student at Georgetown University said. “What state will your home be in? Will you have people to return to who you call home?”

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.