As threats from foreign influences in the U.S. educational system have started to receive national attention, two U.S. representatives introduced a House bill last week that would counter espionage and influence campaigns on American colleges and universities by foreign entities such as the Chinese Communist Party.
Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), announced the Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act—known by the acronym SHEET—Feb. 23 in partnership with House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).
The legislation directs the FBI to “designate foreign intelligence threats to higher education,” and empowers the Secretary of Homeland Security to begin “removal proceedings against agents of such operations,” according to a press release the same day from Steel’s office.
The bill would also require financial contributions from foreign entities, in the form of gifts or contracts, to be disclosed by American colleges and universities.
“The CCP is actively engaged in efforts to spy on American citizens across every industry, field, and institution, including our college campuses,” said Steel in the news release. “We must combat these threats wherever they arise. College campuses should be places that foster academic freedom and sound, unbiased, research—values that the CCP seeks to undermine.”
She said the Chinese Communist Party is the number one threat facing the United States, noting the presence of Confucius Institutes—or China funded cultural educational programs—on American campuses as a major concern.
Steel said under the new legislation any “bad actors” looking to spy on sensitive research or influence youth in academic classrooms would be “quickly and decisively expelled.”
Stefanik also called Communist China’s attempt to infiltrate classrooms a threat to national security.
“As the Chinese Communist Party is actively spreading propaganda and engaging in intellectual property theft … I’m working to combat their malign activities,” she said in the news release.
On the Senate side, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) reintroduced his own bill on the issue, which he had previously introduced in 2018, 2019, and 2021, with all three bills dying after never receiving a vote . His bill is a senate companion—having similar or identical language— to the house bill by Steel.
“China is the single greatest geopolitical threat facing the United States, and the CCP is a profoundly malign influence on our university campuses,” he said in the same news release. “The SHEET Act advances U.S. security by countering the CCP’s espionage efforts targeting American higher education.”
The number of Confucius institutes in the United States has declined with over 100 closed or in the process of shutting down after federal policies have sought to terminate them in the last several years, according to the National Association of Scholars, a New York nonprofit that investigates issues affecting academic freedom.
In a report from last fall, the nonprofit identified only 15 remaining institutes in the United States.
Of those that have closed, the nonprofit said more than two-dozen were replaced with similar programs and nearly 60 have “maintained close relationships with their former Confucius Institute partner.”
Changing names to disguise operations is a familiar strategy to the CCP according to U.S. lawmakers, who asked for an end to the institutes in an April 2021 letter sent to the Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
The call was led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). Several California lawmakers were among the all-Republican signatories, including Steel, Young Kim, Ken Calvert, and Doug LaMalfa.
Since then, the institute’s headquarters changed its name to the Center for Language Education and Cooperation, a move over 20 lawmakers called “rebranding” to avoid the designation as a foreign mission.
