Promoting xenophobic fear in higher education kills intellectual freedom and diversity.

If in a US classroom a teacher hears a Chinese student expressing different views to other students about topics, it is probably better to hear what they have to say rather than defaulting to suspecting that their opinions should be attributed to spying or brainwashing. You cannot talk about freedom of speech and then try to stifle dissenting views in the classroom.

It is no secret that countries compete. I am sure that quite a bit of spying is going on around the world. However, to paint a broad brush against Chinese students and scholars hurts not only innocent Chinese on US campuses, but also higher education in the US too. What Elizabeth Redden and Inside Higher Ed are doing is creating a culture of suspicion in the classroom, and placing the burden of supervision upon universities and professors who will not know what to do. University classrooms are better positioned to pass on knowledge and facilitate the mutually beneficial exchanges of ideas, rather than catching spies.

According to Redden, Wray said spying is “across basically every discipline”. So that includes business, design, history, ESL, music, film, art history, education, physical therapy, conflict resolution, and Biblical studies. Does an education major pose security risks by talking about Bloom’s Taxonomy, Robert Gagne’s conditions of learning, or John Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism? Would it bring the US to its knees if a Chinese scholar studies the works of Eugene O’Neill, Emily Dickinson or Henry James?

Promoting xenophobic fear in higher education kills intellectual freedom and diversity. It is a new form of anti-intellectualism, and would make it desirable to ban all cultural exchanges that have any potential to benefit another country. Just because this is the Year of the Dog does not mean people should go barking up the wrong tree by bringing suspicion upon all Chinese students and scholars.