FBI Director Christoper Wray's comments on Chinese students needs and urgent response from US university leaders

By Ambassador Robert Gosende, a piece which he kindly offered for posting on this blog.

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FBI Director Christoper Wray's comments on Chinese students needs and urgent response from US university leaders

In testimony on February 13 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, during its annual open hearing on the greatest security threats to the country, FBI Director Christopher Wray shockingly claimed that Chinese students in the United States may be covertly gathering intelligence for their government back home.  Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, asked Wray about “the counterintelligence risk posed to United states national security from Chinese students, particularly those in advanced programs in science and mathematics.”  Wray responded, “The use of non-traditional collectors, especially in the academic setting – whether it’s professors, scientists, students – we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country.  It’s not just in major cities.  It’s in small one as well.  It’s across basically every discipline.  And I think the level of naiveté on the part of the academic sector about this creates its own issues.”  Wray went on to slay that the Bureau is actively investigating some Chinese-government backed groups that facilitate dialogue between Chinese and American academics.  And in response to Senator Rubio’s charge that Confucius Institutes, “aim to covertly change American public opinion on the Chinese government by whitewashing its human rights abuses,” Wray responded, “We do share concern about the Confucius Institutes.  We’ve been watching that development for a while.  It’s just one of the many tools they take advantage of.  We have seen some decrease recently in their own enthusiasm and commitment to that particular program, but it is something we’re watching warily and in certain instances have developed appropriate investigations into them.”

However, our most senior international educators responsible for hosting Confucius Institutes have found them to be very positive contributors to the international academic life of their institutions providing significant funding for language study that has, unfortunately, fallen away almost everywhere across our country.  Also, the Chinese government administrators responsible for the Institutes have regularly fallen in line with whatever academic and administrative practices the American universities and public school systems have required for the Institutes to function in our communities.

The Chinese understand that they cannot use the Institutes as platforms for espionage – which would result in their closure.  It is ironic that the idea to establish Confucius Institutes, which would teach Chinese language at the high school and university level across the United States, originated with a Chinese doctoral student at an American university who had been impressed by the way in which U.S. institutions supported the teaching of our language beyond our borders.  I personally find this ironic since my Foreign Service specialization was English Teaching/Educational and Cultural Affairs.  My first Foreign Service assignment was as English Language Teaching Officer in Tripoli, Libya.  We were working to support the teaching of our language across the world by establishing institutions identical to the Confucius Institutes wherever we could.  But that Chinese doctoral student and I saw our language teaching efforts as an integral part of what we needed to do to bring about greater understanding across borders.  We now see in the United States that private institutions, both secondary and university-level, find resources to teach Chinese but public institutions are ever-more strapped to find such funding.  China is now the world’s third largest economy.  We relate to that country in myriad ways and we need ever-increasing numbers of our students to become fluent in Chinese to be able to do so.  Confucius Institutes provide key funding for this to our public schools and universities.

The fact that our country’s senior law enforcement officer, the Director of the FBI, has characterized Chinese students, professors, and scientists as potential risks to the security of the United States is, to say the very least, an enormous disappointment.  One would have thought that Wray might have had better judgment than to label a broad sector of people as being unworthy of trust purely because of their ethnic origin.  Are Wray and his colleagues at the FBI able to tell which people are from China and which are native-born Americans?  Are they able to tell which people are from China from those who are from Korea or Indonesia or elsewhere in Asia?  The racial profiling of people in this manner is particularly important now since it is painfully obvious that our national political leaders have gone out of their way to encourage this kind of thinking about the “others” among us as part of their base approach to governance.  Some few but seriously malevolent US politicians are now calling into question Chinese people and Confucius Institutes to crassly further their personal political ambitions.

Mr. Wray was confirmed by the Senate for his position as FBI Director by a strong bi-partisan majority after receiving unanimous approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee.  However, his overwhelming approval by the Senate should lead no one to believe that he holds mainstream beliefs about or understanding of leadership in our multi-ethnic society.  He hails from a staunchly Republican background.  He has personally donated tens of thousands of dollars to conservative Republican candidates and to the National Republican Campaign Committee.  His biography reveals scant knowledge about and experience in the world beyond our borders.  And now, as our country’s senior law enforcement officer, he has managed to identify yet another broad category of Americans who the Trump administration believes to be suspect.  People of Chinese descent now join black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Muslim Americans as people whose loyalties we need to question.  It is unfortunate that our expectations for sensible appointments to leadership positions like that of the Director of the FBI have been so dumbed-down that no one in the Senate registered into the record Wray’s narrowly parochial background.  Wray, like too many other Trump Administration appointees, seeks to make American safe again for white, and all-too-often, male Americans.  Ours is a highly resilient society and we will survive the depredations of this administration but we should understand the kind of person we are dealing with as we observe and try to deal with FBI Director Wray’s actions now.’s recent comments concerning Chinese students in the U.S needs and urgent response from US university leaders.

In testimony on February 13 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, during its annual open hearing on the greatest security threats to the country, FBI Director Christopher Wray shockingly claimed that Chinese students in the United States may be covertly gathering intelligence for their government back home.  Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, asked Wray about “the counterintelligence risk posed to United states national security from Chinese students, particularly those in advanced programs in science and mathematics.”  Wray responded, “The use of non-traditional collectors, especially in the academic setting – whether it’s professors, scientists, students – we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country.  It’s not just in major cities.  It’s in small one as well.  It’s across basically every discipline.  And I think the level of naiveté on the part of the academic sector about this creates its own issues.”  Wray went on to slay that the Bureau is actively investigating some Chinese-government backed groups that facilitate dialogue between Chinese and American academics.  And in response to Senator Rubio’s charge that Confucius Institutes, “aim to covertly change American public opinion on the Chinese government by whitewashing its human rights abuses,” Wray responded, “We do share concern about the Confucius Institutes.  We’ve been watching that development for a while.  It’s just one of the many tools they take advantage of.  We have seen some decrease recently in their own enthusiasm and commitment to that particular program, but it is something we’re watching warily and in certain instances have developed appropriate investigations into them.”

However, our most senior international educators responsible for hosting Confucius Institutes have found them to be very positive contributors to the international academic life of their institutions providing significant funding for language study that has, unfortunately, fallen away almost everywhere across our country.  Also, the Chinese government administrators responsible for the Institutes have regularly fallen in line with whatever academic and administrative practices the American universities and public school systems have required for the Institutes to function in our communities.  

The Chinese understand that they cannot use the Institutes as platforms for espionage – which would result in their closure.  It is ironic that the idea to establish Confucius Institutes, which would teach Chinese language at the high school and university level across the United States, originated with a Chinese doctoral student at an American university who had been impressed by the way in which U.S. institutions supported the teaching of our language beyond our borders.  I personally find this ironic since my Foreign Service specialization was English Teaching/Educational and Cultural Affairs.  My first Foreign Service assignment was as English Language Teaching Officer in Tripoli, Libya.  We were working to support the teaching of our language across the world by establishing institutions identical to the Confucius Institutes wherever we could.  But that Chinese doctoral student and I saw our language teaching efforts as an integral part of what we needed to do to bring about greater understanding across borders.  We now see in the United States that private institutions, both secondary and university-level, find resources to teach Chinese but public institutions are ever-more strapped to find such funding.  China is now the world’s third largest economy.  We relate to that country in myriad ways and we need ever-increasing numbers of our students to become fluent in Chinese to be able to do so.  Confucius Institutes provide key funding for this to our public schools and universities.

The fact that our country’s senior law enforcement officer, the Director of the FBI, has characterized Chinese students, professors, and scientists as potential risks to the security of the United States is, to say the very least, an enormous disappointment.  One would have thought that Wray might have had better judgment than to label a broad sector of people as being unworthy of trust purely because of their ethnic origin.  Are Wray and his colleagues at the FBI able to tell which people are from China and which are native-born Americans?  Are they able to tell which people are from China from those who are from Korea or Indonesia or elsewhere in Asia?  The racial profiling of people in this manner is particularly important now since it is painfully obvious that our national political leaders have gone out of their way to encourage this kind of thinking about the “others” among us as part of their base approach to governance.  Some few but seriously malevolent US politicians are now calling into question Chinese people and Confucius Institutes to crassly further their personal political ambitions.

Mr. Wray was confirmed by the Senate for his position as FBI Director by a strong bi-partisan majority after receiving unanimous approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee.  However, his overwhelming approval by the Senate should lead no one to believe that he holds mainstream beliefs about or understanding of leadership in our multi-ethnic society.  He hails from a staunchly Republican background.  He has personally donated tens of thousands of dollars to conservative Republican candidates and to the National Republican Campaign Committee.  His biography reveals scant knowledge about and experience in the world beyond our borders.  And now, as our country’s senior law enforcement officer, he has managed to identify yet another broad category of Americans who the Trump administration believes to be suspect.  People of Chinese descent now join black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Muslim Americans as people whose loyalties we need to question.  It is unfortunate that our expectations for sensible appointments to leadership positions like that of the Director of the FBI have been so dumbed-down that no one in the Senate registered into the record Wray’s narrowly parochial background.  Wray, like too many other Trump Administration appointees, seeks to make American safe again for white, and all-too-often, male Americans.  Ours is a highly resilient society and we will survive the depredations of this administration but we should understand the kind of person we are dealing with as we observe and try to deal with FBI Director Wray’s actions now.