Senators to colleges: Reveal foreign agents on campus

March 21, 2018

American universities need to reveal “the malign influence of foreign propaganda” on campus, according to a trio of Republican lawmakers.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced legislation Wednesday that would require U.S. colleges and universities to disclose any foreign government donation of $50,000 or more, in addition to requiring foreign-run programs to register as foreign agents with the Justice Department. The bill was spurred by concerns about Chinese-backed entities known as Confucius Institutes operating on dozens of American campuses, but it applies broadly to all foreign governments.

“If we want there to be free speech and honest debate on our college campuses, then we need more transparency around other countries’ efforts to push their interests on U.S. soil,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who joined Rubio in proposing the bill, said Wednesday. “Requiring organizations like Confucius Institutes to register their activities with the Justice Department and disclose where they get their money is necessary to alert college students to the malign influence of foreign propaganda."

Rubio has been particularly focused on Confucius Institutes in recent months, urging Florida colleges and schools to end the programs. “These institutes are overseen by a branch of the Chinese Ministry of Education, and are instructed to only teach versions of Chinese history, culture or current events that are explicitly approved by the Chinese Government and Communist Party,” he warned in February.

Such programs have played a part in advancing what the intelligence community has regarded as a policy of masking the Chinese government’s ambitions for international prominence. “The key theme is simple: China is not a threat. America should help China to peacefully emerge as a global power,” the Hudson Institute’s Michael Pillsbury wrote in The Hundred-Year Marathon, an analysis of Chinese foreign policy celebrated by the CIA.

The lawmakers hope that, by requiring such entities to register as foreign agents, the appeal of those messages will be diminished. “The goal of this legislation is to increase transparency between foreign governments, universities, and communities,” said Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who is offering a House version of Rubio and Cotton's Foreign Influence Transparency Act. “The American people have the right to know if they are consuming propaganda that is being produced by a foreign government.”

The significance of the Confucius Institutes in particular may be diminishing, but U.S. officials believe that American academia is a broad target for Chinese spies.

“The use of nontraditional collectors, especially in the academic setting — whether its professors, scientists, students — we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in February. “It’s not just in major cities; it’s in small ones, as well; it’s across basically every discipline.”