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?
Sarah McLaughlin: China has a distinctive kind of leverage over higher education, not just in America but globally. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students face pressure from their government, which has deep ties with universities in many countries. Beijing can exert that influence on account of its population and position in the world.
Some Gulf states have close ties with American universities too—Qatar, the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia is trying to establish more; the University of Arizona recently announced they’re opening a campus in Riyadh. But these states can’t censor people on American campuses the way China can.
Those aren’t the only countries, though. India has started trying to interfere with expression globally.
Jönsson: India’s a democracy, though. What about Israel? I know there have been instances of Israeli officials pressuring American universities, too.
McLaughlin: That’s one of the biggest free-speech issues on American campuses right now. International students who want to criticize the Israeli government have real reason to fear they might be thrown in a van and deported simply for engaging in protected political speech about a foreign power.
We’ve seen Israeli ministers contact American universities to pressure them into removing speech the Israeli government doesn’t like. At Princeton, they tried to get a book removed from a professor’s syllabus. Princeton rejected that, as it should have.
China has a distinctive kind of leverage over higher education, not just in America but globally.
But universities sometimes fail to push back against that interference, which only encourages more of it. The more they carve out exceptions for political expression on campus—like incorporating the IHRA definition of antisemitism—the more people will use those carve-outs for their own purposes. It creates a free-for-all of restrictions on speech critical of foreign governments.
Jönsson: What kinds of ties does China have with American universities, exactly?
McLaughlin: Research partnerships, joint institutes, satellite campuses. Also the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of students from China in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada. It has ties to major tech companies that partner with universities, too.
Jönsson: How does it use those ties?
McLaughlin: It has two levers. It can pressure the Chinese students themselves—some have reported their family members taken in for questioning or threatened with arrest because of what they did on American campuses. Not just participating in protests, by the way, but researching sensitive topics too.
And it can pressure the institutions. Chinese students typically pay higher tuition than other international students. They also tend to make up a higher percentage of a university’s total international enrollment—often significantly higher. American colleges have been in a funding crisis for decades, so losing those students is a serious concern.
Satellite campuses can be especially troubling. Universities haven’t been fully transparent—or sometimes, honest—with their students about the gap between what speech protections they say they can offer on satellite campuses and what local law actually permits. I’m not saying satellite campuses should all be shut down, but it’s not clear what academic freedom universities can guarantee on them.
Jönsson: When it comes to China and the Gulf states, who are they trying to silence? Tenured American professors or their own nationals?
McLaughlin: China’s primary target is Chinese nationals studying abroad. The Chinese government operates on the idea that if you’re a Chinese citizen, you follow Chinese law forever, no matter where you are.
Students haven’t been the only target, though. In the early 2000s, Chinese consulates started contacting American university leaders, saying things like, To be a good friend of the Chinese government, it would be in your best interest to disinvite this speaker. Not outright threats, necessarily, but clear insinuations.
Of course, consular officials making veiled threats about retracting funding won’t inspire the same fear as threatening a student with imprisoning their family members for holding a sign at a protest.
Jönsson: What about the Gulf states?
McLaughlin: I haven’t seen Qatar try to silence people on American campuses the way China does. Qatar doesn’t have a large international student population in America. But Qatar has targeted university leaders on American satellite campuses in Qatar itself. The Qatar Foundation—a state-linked body that coordinates satellite campuses there—has contacted university staff to “suggest” they cancel events Qatari officials would prefer not to happen.
Jönsson: Is there any evidence academics feel they can’t say certain things in their classrooms?
McLaughlin: Academics who study China or Hong Kong from a critical perspective sometimes fear being denied visas they might need for research. But that’s outside the university’s control—they can’t force the Chinese government to hand out visas.
Universities haven’t been fully transparent—or sometimes, honest—with their students about the gap between what speech protections they say they can offer on satellite campuses and what local law actually permits.
In some cases, academics who teach international students from China feel it might be best to be careful about what happens in their classroom—they might inadvertently get their students in trouble.
The greatest risk is that people internalize the Chinese government’s expectations—avoiding certain topics or speakers to protect their university or students. Self-censorship is the hardest censorship to combat because it’s the hardest to identify. No university is going to admit, Yes, we’ve decided never to have the Dalai Lama speak because we don’t want to lose access to Chinese students. That would be the perfect scenario for the Chinese government. Instead of running the politically dicey campaign of actively censoring speech overseas, they can just trust they’ll get what they want without ever asking for it.
Jönsson: In the U.K., Chinese students have photographed other Chinese students protesting China’s treatment of Hong Kong. How much of these pressure campaigns comes from the Chinese state and how much from Chinese citizens acting on what they see as the national interest?
McLaughlin: It’s not clear. But we know some have been orchestrated by the state.
The people involved often belong to the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, which has chapters at campuses around the world. There’s nothing inherently wrong with students organizing around shared background or culture—that’s what a lot of student groups do. But there have been enough incidents involving CSSA chapters to make clear they’re heavily involved in censoring international students who protest the Chinese government.
There have been links between these chapters and Chinese consulates, but it’s not clear how often. Sometimes there’s no evidence of state involvement in the campaigns themselves, but consular officials praise the participants for their patriotic fervor afterward.
We want to be careful not to assume state involvement, of course. There are true believers taking this on themselves because they honestly think they’re right. Here in the U.S., we’ve seen people censor their peers without anyone telling them to.
Jönsson: When did this all start?
McLaughlin: Chinese consulates started pressuring universities in the early 1990s. The first letter sent by a Chinese consulate to an American university encouraging them to cancel a Dalai Lama speech was in 1991, as far as I know.
By the turn of the century, we started seeing rates of Chinese international students really rise. The conflicts between students increased around the time of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. That’s when fights started breaking out on U.S. campuses over the Chinese government and its human rights record.
Chinese consulates have become more circumspect about contacting universities now, though—not because they’ve stopped interfering with free speech in America, but probably because they’ve shifted to working with CSSA chapters. That change likely happened because they realized the American public wouldn’t look kindly on Chinese government officials trying to silence people in America. That kind of thing riles people up.
The greatest risk is that people internalize the Chinese government’s expectations—avoiding certain topics or speakers to protect their university or students.
Around 2005 to 2010, universities started expanding in the Gulf states. That’s also when universities were having financial issues here in the U.S. There’s probably a link between universities looking for funding and universities setting up satellite campuses in the Gulf states.
Jönsson: What institutions, if any, have successfully resisted these pressures?
McLaughlin: The University of Chicago received what I’d call a pretty outlandish letter from their CSSA chapter demanding they disinvite the Hong Kong activist Nathan Law. They said he was outside the bounds of free expression—which is absurd to say about the First Amendment.
The most aggressive response would be at Purdue University. A few years ago, ProPublica reported that a Chinese student at Purdue had joined some Zoom protests about the Tiananmen Square massacre. He’d been posting things online and in chats—clear-cut protected political speech in the U.S. His parents were then brought in for questioning back in China. His peers in the CSSA chapter threatened to report him to Chinese authorities. He faced a pretty severe cascade of pressure.
After that reporting came out, Purdue’s then-president, Mitch Daniels, released a statement saying he’d been unaware of it but that harassment like that wouldn’t be tolerated at Purdue, and that students engaging in threatening behavior wouldn’t be welcome on campus. That was a forceful response. It was notable because it was so rare.
Jönsson: Why so rare?
McLaughlin: It’s difficult for a university to say that a government it has numerous ties and financial relationships with is the reason students on campus feel they can’t speak freely, or that they’re being threatened or harassed. You’d seem hypocritical. People would point out the conflict of interest. It’d be awkward to say forcefully, The Chinese government cannot censor students on our campus, because then the next question would be, Then why do you have a satellite campus there? Why do you have a Confucius Institute? So it’s easier to say nothing.
The changing structure of the American university is another major factor, I think. The people who’ve gained influence are those who care most about the university’s branding and finances—maintaining and expanding financial prospects is their primary concern. Sometimes that conflicts with basic academic values the university also claims to protect.
Meanwhile, the people losing influence have been the faculty, especially tenured faculty, who’re often the staunchest defenders of free expression on campus. Tenure is getting rarer. A lot of academics don’t have tenure and aren’t even on track to get it. Many don’t even have the basic protections of a full-time teaching position—they’re working in adjunct roles. Who’s going to be a zealous advocate for academic freedom when they’re terrified of losing their job? Academics know they’re expendable. The academic job market is brutal.
