An advocacy group is recruiting students from both major political parties to push for university divestment from Chinese government-controlled entities.
Athenai Institute co-founder Caleb Max told The College Fix the organization is working to build on the victories it has achieved since he and two other George Mason University students founded it in 2020.
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Three Tennessee members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter expressing their concern and questioning U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about federal taxpayer dollars that go to institutions of higher learning with ties to the Chinese government.
Republican Study Committee Chair Jim Banks (R-IN-03) led the letter, also signed by Tennessee U.S. House delegation members Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-01), Tim Burchett (R-TN-02), and Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04).
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Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) and Congressman Richard Hudson (R-NC-08) introduced a bill that would help protect American intellectual property (IP) from China and other adversaries.
The Trade-Related Intellectual Property Protection (TRIPP) Act would prohibit any president, unless given Congressional approval, from waiving intellectual property rights for certain medical innovations, such as the coronavirus vaccines.
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Alabama A&M University in Huntsville is the latest school to close its Confucius Institute.
According to a press release from Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), the university’s board “voted to close their Confucius Institute and end their relationship with the Communist Chinese Party.”
“Confucius Institutes are nothing more than Communist Chinese Party propaganda and spying units,” said Rep. Brooks. “For nearly a year, I, and other patriotic Alabamians have called on Alabama A&M University and Troy University to close their Communist Chinese Party-controlled Confucius Institutes.”
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Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island will close its Confucius Institute, according to an announcement by President Ross Gittell.
“After 15 years of values language and cultural programs provided through the Confucius Institute at Bryant University, we have chosen not to apply for continued funding at the expiration of the Confucius Institute contract,” Gittell wrote on March 22, “The university will evaluate changes that are taking place in China regarding U.S.-China Relations before making any future commitment.”
Gittell maintained that developing students’ “global mindset is a cornerstone of Bryant’s mission,” noting that the university will still offer “high quality business education through our curriculum offerings in Zhuhai [China].”
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Governor Bill Lee’s newly-proposed legislation wants to prohibit Confucius Institutes in Tennessee – but what if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rebrands and repackages it? A new report surfaced detailing the Confucius Institute’s quiet rebranding of their K-12 Confucius Classrooms under the name “Chinese Language Partner Network.” The change occurred around August or September of last year, according to archived screenshots of the affiliated Asia Society webpage. It coincided with previous President Donald Trump’s policy for Confucius Institute transparency – which President Joe Biden revoked quietly days after inauguration. As of this report, the webpage still lists the existing Confucius classrooms under the rebranded name.
Lee’s proposed legislation, the Transparency in Foreign Investment Act, only deals with Hanban – an abbreviation for the CCP Ministry of Education’s Office of Chinese Language Council International, also known as the Confucius Institute Headquarters. The act doesn’t address Hanban’s close affiliation and, arguably, biggest assistant in expanding their reach: the Asia Society, a New York-based nonprofit that works with both the CCP and the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to expand Chinese language courses in American schools. Since establishing its Confucius Classroom Network in 2010, the Asia Society has worked with Hanban to expand Confucius Classrooms.
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Confucius Institutes across the country are closing, the most recent being at Michigan State University, the University of South Carolina, and Colorado State University.
MSU began its Confucius Institute in 2006 and USC followed in 2008, according to The State newspaper. Both schools will discontinue their programs by the end of 2021. Colorado State University also recently announced that its Confucius Institute will close by the end of June.
While national intelligence officials, including President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the CIA, have warned that Confucius Institutes serve as a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party, these schools are not closing their institutes for this reason. Rather, each of the three schools cited former President Donald Trump moving to restrict the amount of funding for universities with Confucius Institutes.
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) along with six other Republican Senators sent a letter Tuesday to the College Board (CB) questioning the organization’s relationship with the Chinese-backed Confucius Institutes. In the letter, the senators expressed “concern” about CB’s relationship with the Confucius Institute. The CB is a non-profit organization that administers college placement examines including the SAT and Advanced Placement Program. According to its website, CB works with over 6,000 universities around the world and more than 7 million students yearly. On August 13, the U.S. Department of State designated these Chinese-backed institutes as “a foreign mission of the People’s Republic of China.” The State Department described these institutes as “organizations primarily located on U.S. college and university campuses that push out skewed Chinese language and cultural training for U.S. students as part of Beijing’s multifaceted propaganda efforts.” The State Department also said Confucius Institutes are funded by Hanban, which is an organization connected with the People’s Republic of China’s ministry office. As of September, 67 Confucius Institutes are located in America, The National Associated of Scholars (NAS) reported. Five of these locations will close by the end of 2021. Middle Tennessee University is the only college in Tennessee to…
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This week the U.S. Senate passed the Concerns Over Nations Funding University Campus Institutes in the United States (CONFUCIUS) Act by unanimous consent, which U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) co-sponsored.
The legislation addresses concerns about Confucius Institutes suppressing free speech on American college campuses. John Kennedy (R-LA), Doug Jones (D-AL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also co-sponsored the bill.
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The Chinese Virus began infiltrating the United States in early 2020, but the communist country already had a foot in the door well before then.
In the last year, Campus Reform has covered multiple instances of U.S. law enforcement officials charging professors and students with lying about their ties to China while conducting U.S.-funded research and even attempting to smuggle U.S.-funded researched to China.
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by Ethan Cai The Chinese government will completely suspend certain Advanced Placement (AP) history tests by 2020 in an attempt to hide “unfriendly” material. Chinese students seeking college credit for U.S. colleges will no longer be able to take the U.S. history, European history, world history, and human geography AP examinations, reported Reuters. These exams are provided by College Board, an American educational nonprofit that manages the SAT, as well as the AP curriculum. AP courses and exams in the fields of STEM and various other subjects are still permitted. “This is a bit sudden, we don’t know the reason,” SAT Test Web, a Nanjing-based center said on Chinese social media site WeChat. “If you apply for any of these four subjects, it means you need to go to other exams outside the mainland.” A total of five Chinese test centers from the cities of Nanjing, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai confirmed that China’s education ministry mandated that the history tests be ceased by 2020. The suspended history content adds to Beijing’s attempt to censor information that is not approved by the Communist Party in China. Negative viewpoints, for example, regarding the Tiananmen Square incident and the Sino-Japanese War are censored…
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