\n<\/p>\n
Republicans and Democrats spent roughly two and a half hours Thursday holding what a committee chairman called \u201calternate\u201d hearings, with the GOP raising concerns about foreign espionage in higher ed while the minority party denounced student debt and continued moves to dismantle the Education Department. <\/p>\n
It was a preview of how the House\u2019s higher ed focus could change next year if Democrats recapture control of the chamber in November\u2019s midterm elections. While Republicans on the Education and Workforce Committee said the U.S. faces real threats, particularly from China, and accused universities of not doing enough to stop them, Democrats accused Republicans of xenophobia and distracting from continuing college affordability issues that they\u2019re exacerbating. <\/p>\n
Despite the gravity of the dueling allegations, members of Congress sparsely attended the hearing, with many coming in just to make their statements and ask their questions, then leaving. <\/p>\n
California Democrat Mark Takano agreed China poses a significant \u201cintellectual property theft\u201d threat. But Takano, whose parents and grandparents were sent to Japanese internment camps during WWII, raised concern about the tenor of Republican allegations. He noted how the controversial China Initiative during the first Trump administration targeted scholars of Chinese descent. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to policymaking, vehemence does not equal competence,\u201d Takano said. \u201cRather than chest beating and name calling, we must pursue solutions that balance both academic freedom and national security.\u201d <\/p>\n
Committee chair Tim Walberg had called the committee together for a hearing titled \u201cU.S. Universities Under Siege: Foreign Espionage, Stolen Innovation, and the National Security Threat.\u201d The Michigan Republican and his party largely focused on China and Chinese students and faculty.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpenness is one of our great strengths, but it cannot become our greatest weakness,\u201d Walberg said in his opening remarks. In his closing remarks, he said, \u201cI hope there are other institutions all around this country that see we\u2019re serious about that\u2014and that they don\u2019t want to be brought up in front of this panel to be shown as missing the mark.\u201d <\/p>\n
Republicans called University of Michigan interim president Domenico Grasso as one of their witnesses. The massive research university has faced a string of China-related controversies over the last two years, including criminal charges against five Chinese alumni for allegedly spying on a joint U.S.-Taiwan military training exercise while they were students and charges against three Chinese researchers on J-1 visas for allegedly smuggling dangerous biological materials into the U.S. Last November, a U.S. attorney said those latter charges were apparently \u201cpart of a long and alarming pattern of criminal activities committed by Chinese Nationals under the cover of the University of Michigan.\u201d<\/p>\n
CBS News reported, however, that the materials turned out not to be harmful, and charges were dropped after the Chinese government intervened.<\/p>\n
Walberg isn\u2019t the only powerful Michigan Republican who has focused on his state\u2019s flagship institution. In January 2025, Michigan announced it was ending its two-decade academic partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University after Republican representative John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, sent a letter urging it to do so. And in July, the Education Department alleged that \u201ctens of millions of dollars in foreign funding in UM\u2019s disclosure reports have been reported in an untimely manner and appear to erroneously identify some of UM\u2019s foreign funders as \u2018nongovernmental entities,\u2019 even though the foreign funders seem to be directly affiliated with foreign governments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grasso told the committee that his university is \u201cmeeting the increased threat with increased security.\u201d He said, \u201cA small number of university students and researchers from China have been arrested,\u201d and \u201conce alerted, we acted swiftly and decisively, working with federal law enforcement, promptly terminating student work visas and severing all ties with those individuals.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said his university is expanding background checks and \u201cenhancing oversight of biological materials entering or leaving university labs,\u201d among other moves. Michigan has also hired the writers of a Trump administration memo on research security to help it improve. <\/p>\n
Rep. Lisa McClain, another Michigan Republican, asked Grasso, \u201cWhy are the relationships with foreign countries, especially foreign adversaries, why are those relationships even needed?\u201d Grasso said his university wants to attract the \u201cbest talent from around the world to come and work with our researchers and study with our students to the benefit of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Republicans\u2019 other witnesses were the senior director of research integrity, security and compliance at the University of Florida and Elsa Johnson, the editor in chief of the conservative Stanford Review<\/em> student newspaper. She said she was targeted by a \u201csuspected agent of the Chinese Communist Party while conducting research\u201d at the conservative Hoover Institution think tank \u201con Chinese industry and military tactics\u201d\u2014including being offered a paid trip to China. <\/p>\n After Johnson and a co-author at her paper published a report on other alleged spying at Stanford (she said she was one of at least 10 female students targeted since 2020), Johnson said she began receiving \u201cintimidation calls,\u201d including one referencing her mother. She said the \u201cFBI informed me that I am being physically monitored on Stanford\u2019s campus by agents of the CCP and that my family is also being watched.\u201d She went on to accuse Stanford of not doing enough to help her and students in her situation. <\/p>\n The FBI declined comment Thursday to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. In an email, Stanford told Inside Higher Ed <\/em>that the university \u201cimmediately contacted the FBI when it first learned of the concerns, and the university\u2019s Research Security office reached out to the student directly. We have established reporting mechanisms, including a tip line, through which individuals can raise concerns related to foreign influence or targeting, and those channels are being used.\u201d<\/p>\n But Democrats called as their witness for the hearing a director from the Government Accountability Office, who talked about GAO recommendations from years ago that the Education Department hasn\u2019t yet implemented and about the negative impacts of the Trump administration\u2019s layoffs at ED\u2019s Offices for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid. <\/p>\n \u201cEducation reported that between January and December of \u201925 the number of staff at its office of Federal Student Aid decreased 46\u00a0percent,\u201d said Melissa Emrey-Arras, the GAO official. \u201cWithout the [student loan] servicer oversight, Education lacks reasonable assurance that borrower records are correct.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThank you, going back to our topic for this morning,\u201d Walberg said after Emrey-Arras\u2019s opening remarks\u2014a line he would repeat throughout the hearing. <\/p>\n Florida Democrat Frederica S. Wilson\u2014who expressed frustration even with the Democratic witness for not being able to answer her questions\u2014questioned the point of the meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat problem are we actually trying to solve today?\u201d Wilson said. \u201cWhy are we here? Where is the evidence that America\u2019s universities are under siege by foreign espionage at a scale that justifies this level of alarm?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho is truly putting students at risk\u2014this hypothetical foreign actor, or policies that gut federal student aid and undermine the Department of Education?\u201d she said, accusing the committee of \u201cchasing xenophobic conspiracy theories that risk stigmatizing international students and distracting from real problems.\u201d <\/p>\n At the end of the hearing, Walberg said he was hesitant to address the alternate hearing Democrats held. But he then said, \u201cWe\u2019ve dealt with the higher cost of education by trying to put a downward pressure\u201d on it through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also put in means by which these individuals who are out of compliance [in repaying loans] can get back into compliance,\u201d he said. \u201cWill it take some effort? Oh, you bet it will. Paying my mortgage off took some effort. Paying any car loans that I had off that I had in the past took some effort and commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Republicans and Democrats spent roughly two and a half hours Thursday holding what a committee chairman called \u201calternate\u201d hearings, with the GOP raising concerns about foreign espionage in higher ed while the minority party denounced student debt and continued moves to dismantle the Education Department. It was a preview of how the House\u2019s higher ed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[4261,10121,9812,16237,1056,7962,495,3807],"class_list":{"0":"post-47571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-chinese","9":"tag-decries","10":"tag-dems","11":"tag-espionage","12":"tag-focus","13":"tag-gop","14":"tag-higher","15":"tag-issues"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}