US academics pitch new Confucius Institute-style partnerships

US universities are being encouraged to resume partnerships in which foreign countries supply language and cultural instruction, but with the understanding that they play a more direct role in vetting participants.

The suggestion caps more than a year of study by a congressionally mandated expert review panel, organised by the National Academy of Sciences and led by outgoing Dartmouth College president Philip Hanlon, centred on China’s Confucius Institutes initiative.

The Confucius Institutes highlight a model in which US campuses get low-cost instruction in foreign language and culture supplied and financed by a partner country. But Confucius Institutes have shrunk in recent years from about 120 US campuses to a couple dozen or fewer, due to heavy pressure from US politicians citing feared or actual instances of propaganda, censorship and restrictions on free speech.

The latest US campus to end its participation, Alfred University, cited a common driving factor for the withdrawals: a federal law from 2021 that virtually blocks US institutions from Department of Defense contracts if they maintain a Confucius Institutes operation.

The panel led by Professor Hanlon, consisting largely of academic experts, was created by the National Academy with a key objective of finding conditions within the constraints of the 2021 law that would help revive Confucius Institutes in the US.

The experts made clear they regard US universities as essential contributors to US global diplomacy. “International collaborations are a really important part of what we do,” Professor Hanlon told Times Higher Education.

He and his group of experts issued an interim report in January that suggested conditions for enabling ongoing Confucius partnerships – including having host universities demonstrate full control over Confucius Institutes curriculum and instructors. But the flickering hope behind that rushed interim assessment now seems largely lost, with little likelihood that Confucius Institutes will revive in the US, Professor Hanlon acknowledged.

The panel’s new – and final – public report aims to move past the Confucius Institutes, to cite similar examples from China and other countries, and to express the hope that US universities might now create the conditions that will let such alliances thrive without a repeat of the Confucius-specific political controversy.

For that, however, the panel put high expectations on universities. Across a set of eight recommendations, the Hanlon-led group repeatedly identified academic institutions as the party responsible for ensuring that they find trustworthy foreign partners. The experts even suggested that US host institutions carry out their own vetting of potential foreign partners to understand the risks they might pose.

Professor Hanlon told THE he understands that universities may not actually have the expertise to assess the political situation in a particular foreign country, and said he expected US universities to work closely with federal officials to learn about the risks of their potential partners abroad.

The panel meant, by its placement of responsibility on the institutions, to hopefully make clear that it believes the federal government should defer to academics on what foreign partners are ultimately acceptable, Professor Hanlon said.

“The role of the federal government is to provide expert advice; it’s the role, I think, of the host institution to make the final decision,” said Professor Hanlon, who stepped down this month after 10 years leading Dartmouth.

That aspiration does not appear to reflect the ongoing federal attitude, as demonstrated with the Confucius Institutes. The Department of Defense earlier this year did offer a process through which US colleges and universities could obtain waivers that would let them both keep their Confucius Institutes programme and remain eligible for military funding.

But Alfred University leaders said the procedures and politics remained daunting, and its decision has left the US with no campus with military contracts that’s still willing to push for a Confucius Institutes relationship.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com