America Must Continue Leading the World in Science. The DETERRENT Act Threatens That Leadership.

In a recent RCE op-ed piece, author Cliff Smith advocated for a bill currently before the United States Senate by seriously mischaracterizing a quote from our organization’s analysis of a new Department of Education online resource. The author twisted AAU’s words to argue the precise opposite of what our analysis actually concluded.

In reality, we believe that the DETERRENT Act (which has already passed the House) has serious problems – not for what it seeks to do, but rather for how it proposes to do it – and that passing it would amount to an “own goal” in America’s contest to maintain global scientific leadership.

A bit of context: Mr. Smith wrote that we “admit” in our piece that, under current rules, the public “cannot actually drill down to see the details of the individual gifts and contracts” to universities from foreign entities, which universities must report to the federal government under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act. Actually, they could – if the Department of Education would simply set up the resource correctly. AAU’s full quote made clear that we were discussing problems not with the Section 117 requirements themselves, but with the way the federal dashboard fails to allow data universities have already reported to be sorted by the year in which the gifts or contracts were given. Those requirements, we believe, can be improved – but not in the way the DETERRENT Act proposes.

This legislation would lower universities’ reporting threshold for funding from most foreign countries from $250,000 to $50,000 and to $0 for countries of concern, including China. We at AAU believe changes to the reporting threshold are reasonable.

However, the DETERRENT Act would also:

• Ban any academic institution from entering into any contract with a country of concern – including China – without obtaining a waiver from the U.S. secretary of education (waivers we expect will very rarely, if ever, be granted).  
• Compel individual faculty and staff to report any foreign gift valued at more than $480 and any contract over $5,000 to a publicly searchable database.
• While the database would not disclose individual names, it would not be hard for journalists or activists to figure them out.

This risks a host of serious unintended consequences.

For starters, it would endanger countless cultural and academic exchanges – because universities would have to seek special permission simply to, say, host a program with a Chinese classical dance troupe. The legal paperwork required for a program that poses no plausible national security risk would simply not be worth it.

But there’s more examples: Imagine a group of U.S. history scholars that had planned a joint workshop with Chinese counterparts on ancient Chinese architecture, but are forced by the new administrative hurdle to cancel it. Then there are all the graduate students who would stop pursuing dissertations in Chinese language or history because of the new administrative burden. This would lead to downstream negative impacts for American diplomats and intelligence agencies, who rely on the expertise of scholars familiar with our global adversaries and allies alike.

Speaking of allies, even friendly powers and their academic connections in the United States would get inadvertently snared in the DETERRENT Act’s wide net. Imagine all the visiting British or Canadian or Australian scholars in the United States who would now have to file onerous federal paperwork on every birthday or holiday gift from their relatives back home. Instead of bearing the administrative burden, they may simply elect to move their labs back to Vancouver or Oxford or Melbourne – or to Beijing. And (as illustrated by a recent report produced by local Chambers of Commerce), other countries are happily hanging out “help wanted” signs for top American STEM talent whose work or lives have been disrupted here.

And then there are scholars who may be unfairly targeted because of academic work conducted in collaboration with an allied country. For instance, a professor travels to Israel to present a paper on medical research and is reimbursed by an Israeli medical school; under the DETERRENT Act, they’d have to disclose this and any other such travel or research support provided by Israel – and anti-Israel activists could then use the disclosure information to target that faculty member.

Perhaps the most serious issue with the DETERRENT Act is its short-sightedness. We can’t compete with China or other adversaries if we don’t understand them — through language study, cultural exchange, and research partnerships in fields that don’t pose any risk to national security. Putting a sudden end to the exchanges that build that understanding will do nothing to make us more secure in the long run.

For these reasons, AAU opposes the DETERRENT Act, and the Senate should reject it.