China's 'Confucius' Espionage and Propaganda Institutes

I disagree with the ideas below. No doubt China uses these institutes to push its point of view but there are few people who don't do that.  As China is a super-important country, I think America should welcome these institutes as a valuable window into China for students -- JR

On April 21, the London Times reported that Sweden closed the last remaining Confucius Institute in that country. "The Chinese government in 2004 launched Confucius institutes at various foreign universities, with the stated goal of promoting Chinese language and culture," explains columnist Zachary Evans. "However, U.S. officials have stated that the institutes are a propaganda tool meant to enhance China's 'soft power.'" Really? Then why are we still allowing 86 Confucius Institutes to operate in the United States?

That's the most recent number compiled by the National Institute of Scholars, and a list provided by that website reveals a number of high-profile universities have embraced Chinese propaganda for years. Among them are UCLA, Purdue, Stanford, George Washington University, Wesleyan, Michigan State, Tufts, UNC Charlotte, Rutgers, Oklahoma, Temple, Columbia, several campuses of the University of California (UC), and a host of others.

Even more insidious, numerous K-12 public school systems around the nation have also embraced these propaganda mills. In addition to Confucius Institutes, there are "Confucius Classrooms" that ostensibly teach language, operating in more than 500 elementary, middle, and high schools.

These entities remain embedded in American educational institutions despite the alarm having been sounded at least two years ago. "With more than 100 universities in the United States now in direct partnership with the Chinese government through Confucius Institutes, the U.S. intelligence community is warning about their potential as spying outposts," The Washington Post reported in 2018.

A year later, the Senate issued a scathing bipartisan report by a Homeland Security subcommittee stating that, without major changes, Confucius Institutes operating on American college campuses should be shut down.

The report asserted that Chinese expansion of the aforementioned K-12 Confucius Classrooms is a top priority for the regime. Moreover, it noted that, despite an Education Department mandate requiring that colleges and universities report foreign gifts of $250,000 or more from a single source, nearly 70% of schools that received such amounts from Hanban — a Chinese Ministry of Education affiliate that runs Confucius Institutes — didn't comply.

The report further noted that Hanban provides colleges between $100,000 and $200,000 in start-up costs, and a large amount to teaching supplies. It also chooses a director and teachers at no cost to the university. Those teachers sign contracts pledging not to undermine China's national interests, and the Chinese government gets to approve approve every teacher, event, and speaker at the institutes. "Such limitations," the report says, "attempt to export China's censorship of political debate and prevent discussion of potentially politically sensitive topics."

No kidding. Nonetheless, and despite the reality that China has "stifled" U.S. efforts to establish "American Cultural Centers" on Chinese college campuses, the report concluded that American schools should continue to partner with China. "Partnering with foreign universities offers students unique international learning experiences and enhance research opportunities," it stated. "U.S. schools, however, should never, under any circumstances, compromise academic freedom."

Earlier this year, this writer documented one of those "research" opportunities involving Harvard professor Charles Lieber, who was arrested for lying about payments he'd taken from yet another China-enhancing effort known as the "Thousand Talents Plan." That researcher-recruitment effort paid Lieber hundreds of thousands of dollars to help China become proficient in cutting-edge science.

As for compromising academic freedom, who's kidding whom? On far too many American campuses, academic freedom is a sham and has been for quite some time. Moreover, in a long, detailed article for the Harvard Crimson, columnist Matteo N. Wong makes it clear China is part of the mix: Harvard was willing suppress a speech by Chinese dissident and human-rights lawyer Teng Biao to accommodate China's Communist government.

The most important sentence in the Washington Post's 2018 article? The paper noted the threat Confucius Institutes "pose to the ability of the next generation of American leaders to learn, think and speak about realities in China and the true nature of the Communist Party regime."

Last Sunday, Americans got a great indication of that threat. That was the day Microsoft founder Bill Gates defended China's response to the Wuhan virus, pushing back against allegations that the Communist regime covered up the threat. "That's a distraction," Gates insisted. "I think there are a lot of incorrect and unfair things said."

What about America? "Some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place and they avoided incredible economic pain," Gates said. "It's sad that even the U.S., where you would expect to do this well, did this poorly."

The overwhelming majority of countries have been economically devastated, Bill. And isn't a "distraction" when whistleblowers in China sounding the alarm were arrested, censored, and "disappeared," or when a study reveals that a more honest approach by the regime might have prevented approximately 95% of the infections that have spread worldwide?

Gates is hardly an outlier. Ever since the pandemic began, a wholly corrupt media has moved heaven and earth to blame President Donald Trump, not just for his administration's response to the virus but for the virus itself. The Democrat Party has taken the same approach, accusing the president of "xenophobia" and "racism" for enacting a travel ban and then accusing him of not enacting an effective enough one. Even spineless Republicans are getting their pound of flesh: The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a strategy memo that seeks to blame China for the pandemic, but tells candidates "don't defend Trump, other than the China Travel Ban."

In 2019, former FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that Confucius Institutes "offer a platform to disseminate Chinese government or Chinese Communist Party propaganda, to encourage censorship, to restrict academic freedom." Yet they remain welcome in America's educational institutions.

In October 2019, this writer asked a simple question: So, when it comes to America and China, who's changing whom? That column documented the myriad of interests, from the NBA and academia to multinationals and Big Tech — and everything in between — for whom patriotism and national security take a distant back seat to profits and power. How many of those same entities are either headed for bankruptcy or attempting to garner government bailout funds for themselves? How many will even consider completely cutting ties with Communists thugs — as opposed to obfuscating or making phony promises about business and cultural "realignment?"

"We cannot outsource our independence," President Trump stated on April 20. Oh yes we can, if enough Americans are indoctrinated by Chinese propaganda masquerading itself as "cultural exchange."

It's time we recognized entities like the Confucius Institutes for what they really are: The most devious part of a globalist agenda that no longer hides its contempt for American exceptionalism. That's a pandemic far worse than the Wuhan flu.

Here's hoping a majority of Americans will demand an equally determined eradication of it.

SOURCE 





UK: Wokeness has destroyed the university

An academic says that if Oxford develops a coronavirus vaccine, it would bolster racism.

Coronavirus is going to hit universities hard. According to a new report by the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU), they face a £2.5 billion gap in lost fees, and the prospect of tens of thousands of job cuts. For those of us who believe in the value of knowledge and scholarship, this is a grim prospect. Even before the pandemic hit, universities were cutting departments for venerable subjects, including History and Modern Languages, amid a dearth of funding and interest.

The government – perhaps sensing a chance to score a point over those notorious hot-beds of Remainerism – says it won’t step in to help the sector.

Worse still, universities will find that appealing to the public for support might not work either. Many people around the country – rightly or wrongly – believe universities are stuffed with snowflake students and staffed by an overeducated elite who are contemptuous of ordinary people. Those who want to defend the importance of the academy ruefully admit there is some truth in these caricatures. Low academic standards, No Platforming, self-censorship, groupthink and widespread hostility to the canon are genuine problems facing British higher education.

Even inside the universities, the rot of bureaucracy and over-administration is easy to see. Privately, many academics worry that universities are beyond repair – and perhaps not even worth saving.

However, the PR departments of universities across the world might have just had a miracle drop into their laps. Researchers at the University of Oxford have begun trials for a vaccine for Covid-19. Oxford’s scientists are reasonably confident that it will work. The importance of universities as places of deep learning, cutting-edge research and joint endeavour could be demonstrated beyond doubt if Oxford succeeds. Sure, scientists finding a vaccine won’t do much to boost the standing of Classics departments, but maybe the rising tide of university prestige will lift all boats.

Sizing up this open goal of a PR opportunity is Dr Emily Cousens, a teacher on the women’s studies masters course at Oxford. Using the full rigour of the contemporary academy and the weight of nearly a thousand years of Oxford tradition, Dr Cousens sharpens her pencils and prepares for her sacred work of ‘deconstructing’ this news.

What, she asks, will happen if the researchers are successful? Does it mean that hundreds of thousands of lives might be saved? Perhaps it might mean that we might be able at some point to lift the lockdowns that are destroying lives and threatening billions of people with despair and destitution.

Of course not. Remember, the vaccine is being developed in BORIS JOHNSON’S BREXIT BRITAIN. Cousens writes that she does not want Oxford to develop the vaccine. The danger is that it would turn the UK into ‘the world’s saviour’ and affirm a dangerous narrative that says: ‘China, once again, has unleashed a threat to civilisation. But the best brains of the UK have saved the world.’

Perhaps she might have added that a successful vaccine would boost the standing of white male racists everywhere. Immigrants might have to board up their houses. In exchange for the vaccine, countries run by women, like Germany or New Zealand, might have to agree never again to challenge the English in sporting events. The Chinese will be sent packing, and Britannia will rule the waves once more.

Now, we can still hope that Dr Cousens emerges as a Titania McGrath-style spoof. But even spoofs and clickbait touch a nerve because they ring true. Far from being unique, Dr Cousens’s bizarre screed was all too familiar.

Those of us who are committed to the value of knowledge for its own sake, and who find something inspiring in the many thousands of people who choose to devote their lives to learning, deserve so much better from our universities.

SOURCE 





Teachers need to remember how to disagree well

The hostility shown towards those arguing for schools to reopen is remarkable.

Shock, horror – woman writes article in newspaper calling on schools to reopen. Nothing exceptional in that, I thought. But after witnessing the response to Joanna Williams’ recent piece in the Telegraph – ‘Teachers need to show some courage and get back into the classroom’ – I realised I was wrong.

What was exceptional was the reaction of some people online, apparently educators themselves: ‘I hope you get cancer you cunt’; ‘I wanted to hurt you and make you feel pain’; ‘I have never hated someone so much’; ‘I hope you commit suicide’… and so it went on.

I don’t do social media. It is a foreign country to me that I have never had a desire to visit. But I had heard that it can bring out the worst in people, which was clear in response to Williams’ article. There were thousands of tweets spewing vitriol, with little attempt to engage with, debate or challenge the argument put forward.

Instead, there were calls to boycott the Telegraph and report it to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. To these terribly angry people, many of them teachers, Williams had no right to even argue for the reopening of schools.

As a teacher, I was taken aback by all this. Teachers should be known for our open-mindedness and tolerance of different views. But it appears that the anxiety induced by the Covid-19 crisis is amplifying a pre-existing trend towards censorship and the closing down of debate. We are losing the art of being able to disagree well.

For years teachers have felt disrespected and undervalued. Their autonomy has been undermined by various governments. I would argue that this has made many in our profession uber-defensive, bitter and exceptionally hostile to views they disagree with. Too often now, disagreements are wrongly interpreted as personal attacks on individual teachers.

Covid-19 has intensified all of this. There is an exceptional degree of hostility towards anyone daring to suggest it is time to get back to school. Many said they felt personally ‘insulted’, ‘bruised’ and ‘offended’ by Williams’ article. When differences of opinion are viewed in such dramatically personalised terms, all perspective is lost.

The tendency to call for bans and punishment when hearing or reading something one disagrees with is not new. But there are worrying signs that teachers, who really should know better, are increasingly going down this road, at least if this latest case is anything to go by.

Rather than disagree and debate the issue, many teachers in this instance chose to behave like overindulged kids, throwing their toys out of the pram. They wrapped themselves in the comfort blanket of victimhood, feeling hard done by and sorry for themselves. This is exactly what we encourage the young ones to avoid.

We teach our pupils to disagree well. We teach them that the free flow of ideas is a moral good, that the cut and thrust of political debate is beneficial to the individual and society. Therefore, when some teachers decide to play the man and not the ball it is incumbent on other teachers to speak up.

Let free debate reign, including on the issue of whether to reopen schools.

SOURCE