American Academia Funds Genocide and Welcomes China’s Campus Surveillance

The government of China has been accused of arbitrary detention of up to one million Uyghur people, forcing them into concentrated “re-education camps” and exploiting slave labor. In 2022, a United Nations report concluded that China is committing “serious human rights violations.” Since 2021, the United States has publicly declared the situation in XinJiang as a Genocide, citing a “systematic attempt to destroy the Uygurs by the Chinese Party-State.”

Despite these condemnatory statements, American Colleges and Universities have routinely invested in questionable entities, many of whom have ties to the Uyghr genocide or to China’s surveillance state. In 2019, Buzzfeed reported that Princeton, Duke, and MIT had investments through Chinese Venture Capital firms in facial recognition technologies in 2016. The U.S. Treasury has since blacklisted those same firms for contributing to the human rights repression in XinJiang. 

In another case, the Washington Examiner reported this year that Yale and Stanford have invested millions into Hillhouse, a Chinese investment firm founded by Yale alumnus Zhang Lei. Hillhouse has been linked to Longi, a Chinese solar company accused of using forced labor in Xinjiang. What we see in financial disclosures is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Now is the time for students and faculty to demand transparency and ethical due diligence from our universities. A pivotal move in this direction is the “Protecting Endowments from Our Adversaries Act,” championed by Rep. Greg Murphy. This legislation aims to impose a foreign tax disincentive on firms associated with human rights abuses from American educational institutions. This bill is a promising pathway to weaning our schools from Chinese financial dependence. 

American involvement in these shady business dealings does more than contribute to the Uyghur genocide. As American universities cozy up to China, they place students at risk of surveillance and censorship right here on American soil. Since 2006, many schools have even willingly opened their doors to Confucius Institutes, essentially inviting the propaganda arm of the Chinese Government onto their campuses. Confucius Institutes peaked in 2017 with 118 located on campuses across America. 

And let’s not overlook Chinese Student Groups, often masquerading as cultural clubs, but in reality, serving as watchdogs that monitor and report dissident behavior. 

In 2022, during the Beijing Winter Olympics, George Washington University (my alma mater) censored and took down posters protesting the Uyghur genocide and the erosion of civil rights in Hong Kong. At the request of the Chinese Scholars and Students Association, former interim university president Mark Wrighton issued a response banning the posters on the grounds that they amounted to anti-Chinese racism. University staff were instructed to remove the offending posters before online student outcry and media attention compelled the university to reverse course. 

Nevertheless, the shadow of China’s communist party remains on many of America’s campuses. The fact that a Chinese student group was able to leverage a university’s administration to suppress dissidents in the capital of the United States speaks volumes. It shows just how deep a hole we’ve dug ourselves into, becoming trapped by our own performative social justice. It’s a glaring testament to how far American schools have sold out to Chinese influence and how our dependence on Chinese revenues is compromising American education.

The irony is palpable. In their quest to appease a social justice agenda, universities have become complicit in one of the greatest human rights violations this century. Those same campuses that divested from South African apartheid should now also divest from the Uyghur genocide. These institutions have sabotaged their moral high ground by aligning with oppressive regimes for financial gain.

Higher education in America needs a reset. Universities and colleges should return to their roots as havens of free speech, diverse ideas, and ethical integrity. University culture should never prohibit controversy but embrace it as a necessary part of intellectual growth. The pursuit of knowledge should not come at the cost of our human dignity or freedoms. It’s high time to realign the moral compass of American academia.