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THE SHOCKING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY, AS TOLD BY THE BESTSELLING AND PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
The number of Americans studying abroad has doubled since 2001 to over 300,000 in 2014-2015. And nearly one million international students were studying at colleges and universities in the United States in that same year. The exchange of students and information has allowed for the blossoming of friendships and understanding between hostile countries – BUT is also a rich target for intelligence communities, both at home and overseas.
That’s according to DANIEL GOLDEN – longtime investigative reporter and editor. Golden goes so far as saying that U.S. higher education has become a critical arena for international spying!!
Daniel Golden has specialized for the past two decades in higher education coverage. His work—including his Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal articles on college admissions, and subsequent book, the bestseller, The Price of Admission, and his award-winning Bloomberg News series on for-profit colleges—has exposed how institutional greed taints educational decisions that ought to be driven by merit.
“SPY SCHOOLS: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities” continues in this vein, this time examining the alliance between academia and global intelligence communities, and the implications for national security and academic freedom that this relationship entails. Taking advantage of open campuses, espionage services from countries such as China, Russia, and Cuba vie for recruits and sensitive research. The FBI and CIA reciprocate, developing sources among international students and faculty. Universities ignore or even condone this interference, despite the tension between their professed global values and the nationalistic culture of espionage, because international students make up a larger and larger share of the institutions’ revenues. Golden’s vigorous reporting skills meet a compellingly readable narrative in SPY SCHOOLS.

TALKING POINTS:
1. Spy Schools has a lot of eye-catching news that will show readers how spying (both foreign and domestic) is more prevalent on campus than they ever realized.
* A Chinese graduate student poached Pentagon-funded invisibility research from a Duke University lab—and then was staked by the Chinese government to launch a competing venture in Shenzhen that made him a billionaire.

* A Puerto Rican admirer of the Castro regime, who both spied for Cuba herself and recruited a graduate school classmate who would become one of the most damaging moles ever inside the U.S. government,teaches high school in Sweden, beyond the reach of American authorities.
* To attract full-paying Chinese students, Marietta College in Ohio is affiliated with a Beijing university run by China’s intelligence service—and sends its professors there to teach future spies about American culture. The professor who arranged the partnership has ties both to Chinese leaders and the U.S. government.
* The CIA staged academic conferences so that it could lure scientists in Iran’s nuclear weapons program to defect. It warned them that if they didn’t, they would be assassinated.
* CIA operatives have enrolled undercover for decades in Harvard University mid-career and executive education programs, where they cultivate relationships with foreign officials who make up the bulk of the classes. The Kennedy School administration is aware of this practice and allows the CIA officers to use false backgrounds.
*This news has never been reported—the US government has stopped sending students in the Boren program (which prepares them for diplomatic and intel careers) to Russia, because Russian intelligence was harassing them.

2. The media focus in recent years on hacking and cyber-espionage has obscured the reality that, as Spy Schools documents, human spying is widespread and important, and shouldn’t be overlooked in discussions of national security.
-A debate is currently raging about whether the US should let in foreigners, including students/researchers/professors, from hostile countries. Spy Schools provides fodder for both sides in this debate. It shows that some foreign students and researchers are spying on the U.S., but others are recruited on campuses here by U.S. intelligence and sent back to their countries to spy for us. It also describes the educational benefits of immigration and globalization, and suggests ways for universities to reduce the risk of espionage.

3. If you enjoy “The Americans” on FX, you’ll love Spy Schools. It’s “The Americans Go To College.”

4. Universities tamely submit to both foreign and domestic spying. They’re so eager for the revenue associated with internationalizing—from branch campuses and full-paying foreign students—that they turn a blind eye to foreign espionage. At the same time, they no longer resist the incursions of domestic intelligence agencies, as they used to in the 1960s and 1970s, because they’re eager for federal research funding, and worried about being perceived as opposing national security interests in the post-9/11 environment.

AND 4 WAY TRUMP’S LIKELY POLICIES WILL INCREASE SPYING ON CAMPUS:

1) Canceling the Iranian nuclear agreement will spur Iran to resume building a bomb, to which the CIA will likely react by staging more academic conferences in hopes of luring Iranian scientists to defect.
2) Vladimir Putin will probably take advantage of Trump’s appeasement of Russia to insinuate more spies under diplomatic cover and so-called “illegals” into the U.S., including its universities.
3) Unshackled from civil liberties restraints, the CIA and NSA will likely step up surveillance and recruiting of foreign students and professors.
4) China would likely retaliate against Trump’s proposed trade war by siphoning off more federally-funded research at US universities.

About the author: Daniel Golden won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his Wall Street Journal series on admissions preferences at elite colleges, which became the basis for his bestselling book The Price of Admission. He edited a series about how U.S. companies dodge taxes by moving their headquarters overseas, which won Bloomberg News’ first and only Pulitzer Prize in 2015. In 2011, he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his Bloomberg News series about for-profit colleges exploiting veterans, low-income students, and the homeless. He is currently a senior editor at ProPublica.

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