Censors without borders
Shortly before the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, students at George Washington University put up posters criticizing the Chinese Communist Party. The posters called out Beijing’s repression of Tibetan monks and Uyghurs, its Covid-19 cover-up, the whole surveillance apparatus.
The university’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association chapter demanded those responsible be “severely” punished for their “naked attack on the Chinese nation.” Then Mark S. Wrighton, the university’s president, said he felt “personally offended by the posters” and promised to “determine who is responsible.” Campus police started reviewing CCTV footage.
It’s disorienting, the idea of American university leaders silencing criticism of foreign governments on their own campuses. But it’s common now—Chinese, Qatari, Emirati, even Indian or Israeli officials pushing for student censorship. Free speech on American campuses has been contested for years, but the notion that a foreign government could shut it down? Still shocking.
How does that happen?
Sarah McLaughlin is a senior scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech. McLaughlin says American universities haven’t just become compliant with foreign-state criticisms for some reason; they’ve actually enmeshed their interests with foreign states’ altogether. Many of these universities have set up satellite campuses in Gulf states and China, where they can’t protect students’ free expression. And struggling to meet funding requirements, they’ve come to rely heavily on tuition from Chinese students. That gives Beijing substantial leverage—and puts thousands of Chinese students on American campuses within reach of their government’s threats and surveillance.
One reason universities haven’t defended free speech more forcefully, McLaughlin says, is that they just aren’t, themselves, what they used to be. Power has shifted from professors to administrators and business-minded officials whose first concern is branding and finances, not academic freedom. Part-time adjunct roles have replaced full-time professorships. Lecturers don’t have the labor protections they once did—they’re on short-term contracts now. Who’s going to pressure senior leadership to protect free expression when they’re constantly worried about being fired by that same leadership? …
Gustav Jönsson: What foreign governments are the key players here?
