U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) warned about growing foreign influence in American universities at a Senate hearing last week, highlighting legislation he has introduced to restrict student visas and cut off foreign funding on college campuses.
The hearing focused on foreign influence in universities, with Tuberville pressing witnesses on Confucius Institutes, foreign student enrollment, and the national security risks of sharing American research with adversarial nations.
“It’s no secret that foreign adversaries are involved in our higher education system,” Tuberville said. “Whether it’s smuggling millions of dollars in endowments or foreign government-linked academic programs — it’s everywhere in our country.”
Tuberville introduced the Student Visa Integrity Act after watching anti-American protests on college campuses. He described the bill as an effort to prioritize Americans who “love this country” over students from adversarial nations. He also noted that Alabama had closed several Confucius Institutes in recent years.
Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Tuberville that some Chinese post-doctoral researchers at American universities have ties to China’s military industrial complex — and that the U.S. government funds some of them.
“Defense Department funding shouldn’t be going to Chinese researchers who are affiliated with entities that make bombs to kill Americans,” Singleton said. “That seems like a commonsense approach.”
Robert Daly, a senior fellow at the Asia Society, urged caution against painting all Chinese students and researchers with the same brush. Daly noted that 85 to 90 percent of Chinese PhD students stay in the United States after graduating and that foreign-born researchers have won 34 percent of all U.S. Nobel Prizes since 1901.
“We’ve got some of the biggest talent pools in the world currently outside their borders, and they would like to come in as Americans,” Daly said. “We need to remain open to that despite the real threats and issues.”
Both Daly and Tuberville agreed that professors teaching American students should speak fluent English.
Sawyer Knowles is a capitol reporter for Yellowhammer News. You may contact him at [email protected].
