Foreign Funding of U.S. Higher Education Predicts Campus Erosion of Democratic Speech Norms and Antisemitism

This paper examines relations between billions of dollars donated from foreign entities to U.S. colleges and universities over the past decade and political developments on those campuses. We conducted seven studies investigating the associations between this foreign funding and aspects of the campus liberal democratic climate. Specifically, we explored links between different funding sources and the deterioration of free speech and academic freedom, and the presence of antisemitism. Study One reports that 349 colleges and universities received a combined total of almost $18 billion from foreign sources between 2014 and 2019. Study Two examined relationships of foreign funding to two speech outcomes: campus deplatforming of speakers and punitive actions taken against scholars for speech protected by academic freedom. Its main results were that: 1. overall foreign funding was not strongly related to campus speech outcomes; 2. but higher levels of deplatforming and speech punishment occurred on campuses that received funding from member states of the international Organisation' of Islamic Cooperation and from authoritarian countries. Study Three found consistent but weak evidence that foreign funding was associated with college students’ reported exposure to antisemitic and anti-Zionist tropes. After demonstrating substantial correlations among three national measures of antisemitic incidents (Study Four), Study Five found that foreign funding, especially when provided either by member countries of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation or by authoritarian countries, was associated with elevated levels of campus antisemitism and anti-Zionist incidents. Studies Six and Seven employed spatial modeling, finding that antisemitic incidents on campus are associated with and forecast local antisemitic incidents across the country.