Beijing’s Influence on American University Campuses: The Falun Gong Case Study and Beyond

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engages in the world’s most comprehensive campaign of transnational repression, targeting exile communities, members of the diaspora, and supporters in dozens of countries around the world with digital surveillance, attempted censorship, and even physical attacks. This campaign has also reached university campuses in the United States, generating discussion among faculty, students, administrators, and policymakers.

An underappreciated target of this campaign are practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice violently persecuted by the CCP in China. A recent study found that at least 45 US universities have Falun Gong practitioners or clubs on campus and that many encounter suspicious surveillance, intimidation from Chinese officials or their proxies, and even demonizing depictions in Chinese-language textbooks used in American classrooms.

As a new academic year begins, join experts on transnational repression, Beijing’s influence on university campuses, and the persecution of Falun Gong as they shed light on how CCP surveillance, slander, and censorship impinge upon free expression and belief at American universities, and what university administrators and government officials can do to respond. 

Hosted by the Falun Dafa Information Center and moderated by leading Confucius Institute expert, Ian Oxvenad of the National Association of Scholars, this webinar will offer new insight into the key challenges facing universities and recommendations for action to best protect freedom of speech and belief for all students, faculty, and members of the campus community.

A Q&A session will follow the moderated discussion.