On March 19, 2025, the presidents of six American universities, including Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian, received a letter from Congress. The contents of the letter are disturbing, and I believe that compliance with its requests will lead to the persecution of students at American universities on the basis of national origin.
The letter comes from Representative John Moolenaar, Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The letter argues that the enrollment of students from China and from other “adversarial nations” raises “serious concerns about the displacement of American talent, the outsourcing of expertise, and the long-term implications for U.S. technological leadership and economic security.”
Moolenaar’s letter refers both to the threat of direct espionage of “sensitive technologies with dual-use military applications,” and a more general process of “brain drain” in which Chinese nationals use their education to acquire jobs in Chinese private and state enterprises. “The unchecked enrollment of Chinese nationals in American institutions risks facilitating the technological transfers that strengthen Beijing’s military and economic competitiveness at our nation’s expense.”
On March 26, 2025, Farnam Jahanian sent an email to the Carnegie Mellon community with the subject, “Navigating a Shifting Landscape.” It neither confirms nor denies whether the university will comply, fully or partially, with the requests made by Congress. “We are carefully reviewing the letter and will respond to it appropriately, consistent with how we generally respond to requests from the federal government.” Due to this lack of comment, I find it reasonable to assume this means they are likely to comply to the extent that the university has access to the desired information.
The letter makes six requests for information, including name, academic and research affiliation, and sources of tuition funding for Chinese international students. The final request asks for a “country-by-country breakdown of applicants, admittances, and enrollments at your university.”
This is what scares me the most. I believe that there is no inherent difference between a person from America and a person from China, and therefore, no moral difference between an American studying STEM and getting a job for the U.S. military-industrial complex, and a Chinese person doing the exact same thing in China. This is not to say I have sunny feelings about the close relationship between STEM universities and weapons development. In fact, this relationship is the very reason why Moolenaar is, unfortunately, correct. Chinese international students at Carnegie Mellon do indeed pose a national security risk, because you can learn a tremendous amount about building weapons at this school. Their exclusion from our universities is certainly the natural way to alleviate this risk. I think this is self-evidently unjust, and therefore should call into question the merits of “national security,” and more generally, whether we should preserve nationalism as a guiding philosophy for our societies.
If Congress had merely asked for information on Chinese students, I would have assumed that this letter is a prelude to a wider policy of surveilling — and eventually, persecuting and deporting — students from countries other than China.
But I don’t have to assume anything. They practically told us that that is their plan. They are afraid of Chinese people studying at Carnegie Mellon because they know there are many of them. The government may not even have figures on students from other “adversarial nations,” so Congress needs the universities to self-report before they can appropriately monitor the activity of those students as well. I can very easily see Congress making the same requests regarding students from Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, India, Mexico, or any other country they don’t want to “outcompete and surpass the United States.” When they come for one of us, they come for us all.
There is much I could say about the misleading language of the letter. It contains alarmist statistics about the rate at which Chinese nationals return to China following graduation; this ignores the fact that F1 student visas stipulate that students must return home within 60 days of graduation. It skillfully conflates Chinese state-backed spies with the individual students from China who come to this school for the same reasons we all do — namely, to drive ourselves crazy with homework because we are insane. It implies that innovation and science are zero-sum games in which Chinese “technological ambitions” must come at the “expense” of America. It assumes no possibility of shared interest or cooperation. It assumes mutual hostility. It assumes there is a “them” and an “us,” ignoring the American-born Chinese at this school who straddle both cultures with all the precarity and confusion that is characteristic of the American immigrant experience.
The letter presumes to put up walls of hostility and distrust between me and my Chinese peers. It presumes I care more about Great Power Competition than I do about the people whom I see every day in lecture halls, lunchrooms, and libraries.
I’ve never done this before, but hello, Farnam Jahanian. I hope you’re reading. You may not recall, but we met last August on move-in day. I was an orientation counselor. I wore a red shirt.
I tend to not relate to you. I tend to view us as fundamentally un-alike in our goals, because you want to advance the interests of Carnegie Mellon University and I, frankly, do not. Still, I felt bad for you when I read the letter you got from Congress.
I cannot imagine how terrifying that must have been. You are a lot more powerful than me, but next to the United States Congress? You might as well be a scared 21-year-old, too.
I assume you have already made a choice on the matter. My input is probably irrelevant, but in case you do care:
Please, please, please don’t do what they want. I am begging you.
This is how it begins. In every bone of my body, I know this is how it begins. This is how governments separate, divide, and alienate people. It may not seem like much now, but these things happen in increments. The breakdown in foreign relations may take decades, but it must begin with mutual ignorance, fear, and distrust. It must begin with the engineers, business leaders, and policy makers of America and China having no shared identity, no shared experience, and no empathy. When your time as university president is historicized, I sincerely believe that the choice you make here will matter more than anything else you have ever done or ever will do.
You were not born in this country either. You were born in Iran, another nation whose technological capabilities are feared by the United States. You have risen to the highest rank of an American university based on your work and temerity. Now is not the time to bow to the threats of Congress and to alienate a group of students based on national identity. When they come for one of us, they come for us all.
Because you know they won’t stop at China. This is the first step in fully nationalizing our technology and science. This is the first step in America becoming an even more isolated, paranoid nation with weapons trained at every perceived enemy across the globe.
I do not know Congress’s goal in asking for this information, but I fear the worst. I fear that the deteriorating relationship between the two most powerful governments on Earth will lead to a horrible, global calamity within my lifetime.
But we are not there yet. I still have hope that the bonds that unite Chinese and American people are stronger than the political forces that seek to divide us. All conflict stems from a lack of mutual understanding, so allow me to make my stance as clear as possible.
To the Chinese students of Carnegie Mellon: I have no animosity or distrust toward you. I have far more in common with you than I do with Representative Moolenaar. I feel compassion and respect for you, as I do with people from every country on Earth. I don’t know why our governments hate each other so much. I’m perfectly alright sharing my toys with you.
Won’t you be my neighbor?
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