Tuberville Warns About Rising Foreign Influence in American Universities

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) participated in a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee hearing on reducing foreign influence on American higher education. Sen. Tuberville has introduced several bills looking to stop influence from countries of concern, including China, in American universities, including the Safeguarding American Education from Foreign Control Act and the Student Visa Integrity Act.

Witnesses in the hearing included Dr. Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars, Craig Singleton, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Robert Daly, Senior Fellow for the Asia Society.

Excerpts from Sen. Tuberville's remarks can be found below, or viewed on YouTube or Rumble.

TUBERVILLE: "Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for being here. It's no secret that foreign adversaries are involved in our higher education system. Whether it's smuggling millions of dollars in endowments or foreign government-linked academic programs-it's everywhere in our country. In the last few years, we closed down just in my state alone several Confucius Institutes-they don't deserve to be anywhere in our country. The more I learned about the sheer numbers and influence that foreign adversaries have in our education system, it led me to introduce the Student Visa Integrity Act. I introduced it last summer after watching all these anti-American protests on our college campuses. My bill gives the opportunity to get a degree back to Americans who love this country and not students who are adversarial from some of these other countries.

Dr. Wood, you mentioned Confucius Institutes. Now that we've closed-across this country and especially in my state-some of these down, how can we tell that they're gone for sure? And then how can we tell that the affiliated professors are not still around and they're also gone?"

DR. WOOD: "It won't be easy. You will have to rely on the truthfulness of college presidents who are known to prevaricate on these matters. I think auditing the institutions is probably the only sure way of finding out whether Chinese funding continues to flow to these influence operations."

TUBERVILLE: "Do you think the professors are still hanging around? And how's the best way to get rid of them?"

DR. WOOD: "The Han Bond or the Chinese Communist Party rotates the professors in and out. So, it's not that the same people who will be there. In some cases, they are, but in other cases, new ones are coming in and going out all the time."

TUBERVILLE: "Thank you. Mr. Singleton, I'm glad you recognize the nation's higher education system is one of our biggest assets if we use it the right away, obviously. Our economy and our workforce is only as good as our education system. You know, I hear from students all across our state all the time about barriers that they face, whether it's getting into a class because we have too many foreign students in those classes [that are] are already full, or the language barrier, which is absolutely ridiculous when professors can't even speak our language and we're trying to teach American kids. It's absolutely ridiculous. So over time, if students on foreign visas outnumber American students, what does that mean for our workforce pipeline in the future?"

SINGLETON: "Thank you, Senator. It's certainly a concerning trend that we've seen. Not only are there a large number of Chinese students at some of these universities, but, in some cases, the U.S. government itself pays Chinese post-doctoral students to do research at our universities. And some of those students have been determined to be affiliated with not only the People's Liberation Army, but entities in China that are affiliated with China's military industrial complex. The long-term development challenges are massive. Of course, both Democrats and Republicans understand that we need to build our defense innovation base. We need to be investing in ourselves and preparing for this to control the drivers of the twenty first century industrial revolution, which are primarily technology related. We have to find an appropriate balance here, but I think we should all agree that Defense Department funding shouldn't be going to Chinese researchers who are affiliated with entities that make bombs to kill Americans. That seems like a commonsense approach and perhaps one for legislation could be introduced that would address that challenge."

TUBERVILLE: "Thank you. Mr. Daly, how dangerous is it to our national security to share research and technology with the Chinese Communist Party?"

DALY: "Well, Craig is right that the evidence to date is that the most problematic group of Chinese scholars on American campuses is not the undergraduate or even the graduate students. It's post-doctoral fellows and researchers. But we also have to be very careful not to tar them all with the same brush. There's definitely a problem and many of these people are also among the finest minds in their disciplines and most of them seek if they can to stay. The data to date is that 85-90% of Chinese PhD students stay in the United States after graduating, and that's going down a little bit right now. We can talk about that as well. There's been a little bit of a reverse brain drain of people going back. But that most seek to stay in the United States. David Zweig, an American scholar in Hong Kong, has also demonstrated repeatedly that the people who stay here, become American citizens, and dedicate their talents to us are among the top scholars in their fields. And I think that we need to be very careful to keep that channel open, as I write in my testimony. Since 1901, 34% of all U.S. Nobel Prizes have been won by people who were foreign born. We do need this talent. We must also foster our own domestic talent to be absolutely sure, but the record of these people here has been superb, and they've dedicated themselves to science and to our research enterprise. So, vigilance, staying on top of it, I am very happy to associate myself, you know, with almost all of Craig's comments, but 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. And I think we need to remain open to that despite the real threats and issues that you raised."

TUBERVILLE: "Do you agree that they should be fluent in English?"

DALY: "They should have English language competence, especially if they're teaching. There's a distinction. I've been in some of those classrooms that you're talking about. So, yes, if they're going to be teaching, clearly, they should be fluent in English."

TUBERVILLE: "Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman."

Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans' Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.

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