BY AMY LAI

Academic freedom is generally defined as the freedom to engage in activities involved in the production of knowledge, without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations, or public pressure. Interferences with academic freedom can come from within the academy, such as in the form of institutional pressures, but may also come from hostile foreign powers that are not content with countries mutually learning from and shaping one another’s cultures and instead aggressively extend their influences in Western democracies and force democratic institutions to abide by their rules. One of the best examples is the Chinese government, which seeks to expand its influences in Western academia by building satellite campuses in China or Western universities governed by Chinese rules of engagement. The Chinese government also established the “Confucius Institutes,” whose curricula are heavily biased in its favor and make no mention of contentious issues such as Taiwan and Tibet. Many Western academics and political leaders—whose attitudes have been a combination of ignorance, tolerance, pacifism, and indifference—have enabled China to establish footholds in Western academia and chill criticisms of their hostile government.

My study, conducted from 2023 to 2024 with the generous support of Germany’s Einstein Foundation, aimed to examine and compare the success of the Chinese government’s interferences with academic freedom in Germany and the United Kingdom, as measured from the perspectives of teachers and students in the universities in these two countries. It hypothesized three major factors influencing the success of the Chinese government’s interferences with academic freedom in Germany and the United Kingdom: (1) the extent of legal protection of academic freedom; (2) the degree of financial dependence on Chinese resources; and (3) the existence of excessive “political correctness” in the academic culture of the country.

These factors were selected for the study based on three documented differences between Germany and the United Kingdom. While the German constitution recognizes academic freedom as a fundamental part of its democracy, academic freedom is merely a statutorily protected right in the United Kingdom. Second, although many German universities collaborate with Chinese state institutes (such as by setting up Confucius Institutes), most of them are publicly funded and do not charge any tuition from local or foreign students. On the contrary, numerous British universities collaborate with Chinese state institutes and accept substantial donations from Chinese companies, as well as obtain much of their income from Chinese international students, a minority of whom could be ultranationalist and intolerant of even constructive and fact-based critiques of their China. This has led to heavier financial dependence of British universities on Chinese funding than their German counterparts. Third, while the merits of politically correct language and practices should not be denied, political correctness may become excessive and dampen academic freedom by cultivating intolerance for dissenting opinions and by discouraging even respectful and well-informed debates on sensitive but timely topics concerning race, immigration, and foreign relations. Numerous critics have noted that the PC culture has gone too far on British campuses. Although German universities also increasingly embrace inclusiveness and tolerance, its PC culture is generally not considered excessive.

My study, based upon anonymized quantitative surveys of thirty participants from each country, first educated participants regarding “benign” and “malign” foreign interferences to ensure that they knew the survey was about the latter and not the former. Participants were told to rate on a five-point scale (from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) on whether they had refrained from expressing opinions on China-related topics due to a general climate of fear or a well-founded fear of threats, attacks, and surveillance in the past. The study found out that participants in both countries found interferences from the Chinese government to be a highly observable reality. However, the answers to the five-point scale showed that there is a significant difference in their perceived success of interferences due to both a general climate of fear and a well-founded fear of threats, attacks, and surveillance. Participants in the United Kingdom reported significantly more successful interferences than those in Germany did. Additionally, in the United Kingdom, the correlation between high success of interference and heavy reliance on Chinese funding was found to be statistically significant, where in Germany, the correlation between relatively low success of interference with relatively low reliance on Chinese funding, though not statistically significant, is at least considerable. On the contrary, in both countries, there is no significant or considerable correlation between foreign interferences and political correctness culture (be it excessive or nonexcessive), or between foreign interferences and the extents of legal protection of academic freedom (be it constitutional or statutory). My study recommended that British universities reduce its dependence on Chinese funding by diversifying its funding sources and thereby promoting real inclusivity.

While my study does not focus on the United States, my policy recommendation also applies to American universities. The US Supreme Court extended the right to free speech protected by the First Amendment to academic freedom. In this respect, members of American universities enjoy as much freedom as their German counterparts do. The broad and robust free speech protection offered by the First Amendment also serves to counter the stifling effect that excessive emphases on inclusion and multiculturalism might have on campus speech. While most Confucius Institutes have been closed on American campuses, civil and reasoned dialogues on timely, important China-related topics might still be discouraged due to some universities’ reliance on Chinese-sourced funding, which creates a general climate of fear and coercion or even subjects them to more direct threats. Universities must have in mind the difference between benign and malign interferences from foreign countries as they promote cultural exchanges while guarding this inviolable freedom against hostile forces.

Amy Lai is the recipient of PEN Canada’s Ken Filkow Prize in 2021 and the University of Potsdam’s Voltaire Prize for Tolerance, International Understanding, and Respect for Differences in 2023. She is also the author of In Defense of Free Speech in Universities: A Study of Three Jurisdictions (University of Michigan Press 2023). She can be reached at amy.ty.lai@gmail.com.