As the federal response to Chinese influence at American universities falters, Tennessee is determined to pick up the slack by becoming the first state to ban the Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute from public universities.
After President Joe Biden scrapped a Trump-era proposal that would have required universities to disclose their foreign monetary ties, Governor Bill Lee realized that he needed to act quickly to protect the state’s universities from Chinese influence. The Tennessee Republican introduced a bill in the state legislature that would require the public universities to sever ties with the Confucius Institute.
