COLUMBIA — The University of South Carolina was among 30 universities that the U.S. Department of Defense told to audit partnerships with institutions connected to hostile foreign governments, a university spokesman confirmed.
But the program Pentagon officials were concerned about at USC, a joint business degree with Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, had been cut months before the government reached out in August.
USC independently ended the program in February after a review by its Office of Research Security raised “risk considerations,” spokesperson Jeff Stensland said.
Neither he nor a response letter to the DOD from university President Michael Amiridis detailed what those considerations were, but the university’s research security office is responsible for helping academics avoid relationships with foreign entities seeking to “wrongfully appropriate” American research data or intellectual property.
“Through these efforts, USC seeks to support responsible international engagement while protecting the integrity of the university’s research enterprise and maintaining compliance with applicable federal requirements,” Amiridis wrote.
The DOD’s communication to USC and other universities, which it publicly described as an order that continued federal research funding depended on, comes as the Trump administration has sought to counter Chinese influence in the Americas, including what it considers efforts to steal emerging technology.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University was one of 130 institutions the department designated as “engaging in problematic activities” in a July list, which included organizations in China, Russia and Iran.
Working with entities on that list could “introduce significant risk to both your institution and the broader national security landscape,” Joseph Jewell, an assistant secretary of defense, wrote in an Aug. 10 email to Amiridis.
A university review confirmed it no longer had any formal partnerships with any such institutions, Amiridis said in his reply.
USC’s board of trustees voted in 2021 to end its Confucius Institute, a language and culture program that critics said was run by the Chinese government and whitewashed its history, according to reporting at the time from The State newspaper.
Efforts to limit South Carolina schools’ relationships with adversarial foreign nations have also gotten some attention in the Statehouse, where House legislators passed a bill meant to curtail foreign influence earlier in the year. It was not taken up by the state Senate.
