New Mexico State's Confucius Institute is closing; here's why

LAS CRUCES - Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world and is increasingly important in global business and policy, yet instruction in the language and culture of China will halt at least temporarily at New Mexico State University after this semester, when the university closes its Confucius Institute.

With its closure, public schools in New Mexico and neighboring El Paso will also lose Chinese language classes and cultural activities the institute provided. The programs were funded by the Chinese government.

The decision is part of a wave of closures of Confucius Institutes at American universities in recent years.

NMSU's Confucius Institute was founded in 2007 in partnership with China's Shijiazhuang University of Applied Technology and, later, with Hebei Normal University.

While much of the cost of the programming is reimbursed by the "Chinese side" of the partnership, NMSU provides office and storage space and half of the full-time salary of the institute's director, Elvira Masson.

Masson, a professor of East Asian studies, has been involved in the institute from its inception and took over as the institute's director in 2015 after serving for a period as co-director with her colleague Kenneth Hammond, a founder of the program.

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NMSU cited low enrollment and "funding issues" with the Office of Chinese Language Council International, the institute's headquarters in Beijing (commonly referred to as "Hanban"), in its decision to close the institute.

In a statement, the university said the action is "part of a larger reorganization process, which has the goal of expanding our international initiatives, identifying and securing alternative funding sources, and providing stronger coordination among those involved."

"This move will allow NMSU an opportunity to shape a language curriculum that is better suited to our students and the directions the university is pursuing," according to the statement.

Confucius Institutes under political fire

The University of Maryland established the first CI in the United States in 2004, and at its peak there were approximately 90 sites in addition to locations at universities worldwide.

At NMSU, the program presented Chinese New Year celebrations and other cultural events, public lectures, and international academic conferences. The program also provided language instruction for local public schools.

With funding from the Chinese government and visiting scholars from China, the institutes have come under political fire in the U.S. in recent years.

In 2018, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee his bureau was concerned that CI's might be used to plant operatives and exploit academia for the purposes of propaganda or espionage. Some senators urged universities in their states to terminate the programs.

Many did just that, especially after the 2019 national defense authorization prohibited universities from hosting a CI if they also received federal funding for Chinese language studies.

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The University of Missouri recently announced it was closing its CI because the U.S. state department changed its visa policy to require a certified Mandarin Chinese language teacher in every classroom with a Confucius Institute member. The university said complying with that directive would be cost prohibitive.

Loss of instruction and outreach

The institute at NMSU provided Chinese language instruction there and at the University of Texas at El Paso, as well as dual credit courses at schools in Doña Ana County and elsewhere in New Mexico. The institute also provided teaching materials and cultural activities at the private Cathedral High School in El Paso.

"The institute was providing instructors for the Chinese language classes being taught at the high schools across the district," Las Cruces Public Schools Superintendent Karen Trujillo told the Sun-News, adding that after this semester "it will be difficult to continue offering Chinese as a foreign language option for our students."

Masson said Chinese language instruction in K-12 schools was popular with parents.

"We used to teach Chinese in Hatch and in Vado, and in both places Spanish-speaking parents came to us and said, 'We want our kids to be able to speak Chinese because the pecan buyers and the chile buyers are Chinese, and we want to be able to talk directly to them." Masson recalled during an interview at her office on campus. "If they've grown up in a bilingual world, they know the necessity of being able to meet people in their language."

The institute also hosted speakers' series open to the public, often on topics unpleasant to the Chinese government, as when it screened a documentary about a Tibetan exile in China and hosted a talk by the filmmaker — all with Chinese funding.

On Feb. 26, the institute will present what may be its last public talk, featuring Georgetown University professor and China expert James Millward. His talk will focus on the Chinese government's treatment, including mass internment, of the Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic minority that is predominantly Muslim, inhabiting the northwestern region of Xianjiang.

Despite concerns raised at some CI locations over academic freedom and censorship from Beijing, Masson said NMSU had never experienced opposition from China over the content of its programming or the speakers it hosted.

"We have always stated categorically, explicitly, the minute our granting agency denies us funding for any activity that we plan to do, that's the minute we shut our doors," Masson said.

Closure 'an unfortunate choice'

Hammond, the CI's first director, said speaking events organized by the institute have been a successful outreach opportunity for NMSU, drawing visitors to campus while providing students with exposure to international studies and an important world language.

In an interview on campus, Hammond called the closure "an unfortunate choice that our administration has made, depriving a whole lot of kids of educational opportunities that I just really feel are critical right now."

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Hammond argued that if enrollment was a factor in the administration's decision, a better conclusion would be to promote the institute further, since it offered so much instruction and community outreach at very little cost to the university.

"We are serving a community that is generally underserved, and perhaps stands to benefit more from this kind of increased international opportunity," he said.

Federal pressure to close CI's

Although the university does not receive funding from the Department of Defense for language programs, it has worked with the department on a range of programs in research, training and scholarships.

Masson noted that political pressure has been building in Congress to use all federal funding as leverage for inducing universities to close their CI's.

"Every year when the defense authorization acts … come up, senators have tried to put riders in saying if you have a CI on your campus, all DOD funding will be removed," Masson said. "Those haven't passed, but the drumbeat's been there. Any big state institution that gets millions of dollars of DOD funding cannot afford that risk."

"NMSU is committed to international collaborations and we will continue to provide students with opportunities to learn about different cultures and languages," the university's statement said. "We will expand our efforts to build educational and cultural connections with the people of China and provide quality language programs to our students."

Hammond suggested closing the Confucius Institute amounted to walking away from a program that has been delivering on that promise for 12 years.

"It just seems so counterproductive to turn away from an opportunity that is otherwise just not going to be here," he said. "It's not as though the university has the spare resources to create new positions to teach Chinese on campus."

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.