Possible Return of Confucius?

As blog readers will recall, UCLA at one time had a Confucius Institute but discontinued it, along with those at most other universities, when there were pressures from the U.S. government and concerns about independence from the Chinese government.

According to Inside Higher Ed, there is now some possibility of such institutes returning:

Over the last five years, most of the Confucius Institutes hosted at American colleges and universities have closed down—but now a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine outlines a process for their potential return.

Whether U.S. colleges and universities would be interested in partnering with the Chinese government to host a Confucius Institute is unclear. The institutes started in 2004 as a way to provide Chinese language instruction and cultural programs to communities, K-12 schools and college students, but they came under scrutiny during the Trump administration from lawmakers who said the institutes were a national security threat. Faculty groups had been sounding the alarm about the threat to academic freedom before lawmakers got involved. As part of the Confucius Institute model, the Chinese government would provide instructors and funding, and the host institution would provide matching funds and in-kind resources, such as office space.

Gao Qing, former director of now-closed Confucius Institute U.S. Center, said he doesn’t expect to see a return of Confucius Institutes. The Confucius Institute U.S. Center served as the headquarters of the American network of institutes, and the State Department designated it a foreign mission of the People’s Republic of China in 2020. “The ground is poisoned right now, not only with the Confucius Institutes but also almost everything related to China,” Gao said.

Today, there are seven institutes—one of which will close in June—down from the peak of more than 100. Many colleges and universities opted to close their institutes after a change in federal law that barred institutions with Confucius Institutes from receiving Defense Department money. The department was able to exempt institutions from this prohibition but declined to issue the necessary waivers.

The National Academies report found that the CIs, as the institutes are widely called, can be beneficial to universities but do pose risks academic freedom, freedom of expression and research security. To mitigate those risks, the report recommended a set of criteria for waivers. The Defense Department sponsored the report, which was released this month. The Committee on Confucius Institutes at U.S. Institutions of Higher Education, made up of college administrators and professors, wrote the study.

...The proposed waiver criteria could be used starting Oct. 1 if the Defense Department decides to move forward...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/26/report-proposes-waiver-criteria-confucius-institutes.

The only remnant of UCLA's Institute is a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/UCLA.CI/. It hasn't been updated since 2018.