Pompeo Warns of Chinese Threat to US Colleges

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday highlighted the danger China poses to both security and free speech on U.S. college campuses, warning that many U.S. colleges are “basically bought” by Beijing and that they censor themselves to avoid upsetting the communist regime.

Pompeo warned that the Chinese regime is “poisoning the well of our higher education institutions for its own ends” and that they “degrade our freedom and America national security.”

“If we don’t educate ourselves, if we are not honest about what is taking place, we’ll get schooled by Beijing.”

The top diplomat said that many American scholars have been “lured” into its recruitment programs and they are paid to do research in or for China, while others are easy targets for their anti-American messaging due to their own anti-American bias.

While one might expect that scholars and administrators would be “up in arms” about Chinese interference, Pompeo said, the opposite is true and colleges engage in self-censorship.

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He said that while censorship is often purportedly done for politically correct reasons, he doubted that is the real reason.

“We see too often on American campuses that the silence and censorship driven by the Chinese Communist Party usually boils down to something far less idealistic — so many of our colleges are bought by Beijing,” he said.

Pompeo cited instances where universities reportedly refused to defend their students due to multi-million-dollar deals with China.

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