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TitleArticle: Schools Must Choose Between Defense Funding and Confucius Institutes for Chinese Study
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From https://www.npr.org/2019/07/17/741239298/as-scrutiny-of-china-grows-some-u-s-schools-drop-a-language-program

As Scrutiny of China Grows, Some U.S. Schools Drop a Language Program
by Greg Myre
July 17, 2019

The Defense Department wants more Americans to speak Chinese, and it provides millions of dollars to train students at U.S. universities. 

China's government, through language centers known as Confucius Institutes, has been doing the same thing, for the same reasons, and at some of the same U.S. universities.

But a new law has forced these American universities to choose: They can take money from the Pentagon or from the Confucius Institute — but not both.

...Riding a wave of rising American interest in China, the first Confucius Institute in the U.S. opened at the University of Maryland in 2004. The institutes quickly expanded, growing to more than 100 in the U.S. and more than 500 worldwide.

But, forced to choose, at least 13 U.S. universities have closed Confucius Institutes in the past year, in order to preserve Defense Department funding. They include the University of Oregon.

"It's very clear that faculty were anguished about the choice," said Dennis Galvan, the university's vice provost for global engagement. "They would have much preferred to not have to choose between these two projects that they had created and nourished for more than a decade. So it was a reluctant decision."

The Defense Department program, known as the Language Flagship, sends close to $1 million annually to the University of Oregon for Chinese language studies, and about a third of that is then passed on to Portland public schools for their own Chinese language instruction, Galvan said.

...The University of Nebraska is keeping its Confucius Institute, which Harvey Perlman helped bring to the school in 2007 when he was the chancellor. As part of the arrangement, the institute sends about a dozen Chinese language teachers to high schools around the state.

Read the full article at https://www.npr.org/2019/07/17/741239298/as-scrutiny-of-china-grows-some-u-s-schools-drop-a-language-program

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