More Scrutiny for Confucius Institutes; One to Close

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio wrote to four Florida colleges and universities Monday asking them to close their Confucius Institutes, centers of Chinese language and cultural education that are housed in U.S. colleges or schools and funded and staffed by a Chinese government entity. In 2014, the AAUP called on American universities to end their involvement with Confucius Institutes unless they can renegotiate agreements to ensure that “the university has unilateral control … over all academic matters” and that “the university affords Confucius Institute teachers the same academic freedom rights … that it affords all other faculty in the university.” The AAUP also called on colleges to make their Confucius Institute agreements public.