UNC Shuts the Door on Shanghai (For the Right Reasons)

For years, Fudan University offered UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduates a taste of Shanghai academic life. Now, that door is closed. The reason isn’t budget cuts or falling enrollment—it’s national security. And how UNC arrived at that decision reveals a lot about the balance between global engagement and common sense.

UNC-Chapel Hill recently ended its undergraduate study-abroad program with Fudan University in Shanghai after the Chinese school was added to a Department of War list of foreign institutions engaged in “problematic activities.” Chancellor Lee Roberts said the university made the call “out of an abundance of caution.”

The Fudan partnership wasn’t new and wasn’t flashy, just a steady pipeline of students to Shanghai, one of the biggest cities in the world, for over a decade. First proposed in 2013 and renewed in 2022, the program allowed UNC undergraduates to take English-language courses through Fudan’s School of Social Development and Public Policy and its International Summer School. 

The arrangement drew scrutiny only after Fudan landed on the Department of War’s Section 1286 list in late July. Why the switch? While the DOW wasn’t specific, its announcement asserted that Fudan was one of 130 Chinese universities “confirmed to engage in activities that increase the likelihood of U.S. government-funded research and development efforts being misappropriated.” Considering that China frequently uses its universities as part of its espionage efforts against the United States, that seems like the right call. 

In any case, once that happened, UNC reviewed the relationship and shut down the study-abroad program—even though it had nothing to do with sensitive or federally funded research. The university didn’t pull students out mid-semester, though: four UNC students already studying at Fudan will finish out the term. Nobody lost class credits.

This decision wasn’t out of the blue. The Department of War has been pushing universities to scrutinize their foreign partnerships more broadly, and UNC was one of 30 research universities asked to review relationships with foreign institutions that could raise national-security concerns.

Comply or lose the money. That’s the deal DOW offered. Schools had until the end of August to report their findings and cut any relationships the department flagged as problematic. Those that didn’t obey risked losing federal research funding. This makes sense—after all, why would the federal government want to fund its enemies?

UNC’s review turned up two other unfunded research projects involving Chinese universities. One paired researchers at Harbin Institute of Technology with a faculty member at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. The other connected Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a faculty member in UNC’s School of Data Science and Society. 

Neither project received or involved federal funding, and neither overlapped with federally sponsored research. Both are winding down, and the faculty involved have agreed to end the relationships once their publication work is finished. Nobody’s getting fired, they’re just letting the clock run out. 

International partnerships still matter. Students benefit from studying abroad, and researchers gain from working with colleagues around the world. Isolation isn’t the goal here. But universities also have to weigh who they’re partnering with and what those relationships could mean for national security. UNC’s response proves that taking those concerns seriously doesn’t require severing every international tie.

UNC didn’t just react to the DOW’s directive on Fudan—it used the moment to take a hard look at its other Chinese partnerships and make judgment calls about which ones should continue. That’s the right call for an institution responsible for protecting its students, its research, and its federal funding. It’s also the right call for a university that the DOW just rewarded for taking moral formation seriously.

UNC’s approach may look cautious, and it is. Universities don’t have to choose between international collaboration and national security. They can do both, but they have to be willing to make hard calls, and put their institution’s integrity and their country’s interests first. UNC’s handling of its Chinese ties shows other universities exactly how it’s done.

Reagan Allen is the North Carolina reporter for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.