OU faculty senate looking for answers to new policy restricting
Dec. 14—Members of the University of Oklahoma Faculty Senate want more clarification about a subcommittee policy that identifies risks associated with hosting visitors of foreign countries.
In January 2021, the university formed the Enterprise Risk and Compliance Oversight Steering Committee. The panel, which advises the president, identifies compliance and regulatory risk areas and appointed the ERCO Foreign Influence Subcommittee.
The Dec. 12 Faculty Senate regular meeting agenda states: "OU has long supported and depended upon international partnerships and collaborations. OU welcomes visitors to its campuses, including from partner institutions and foreign governments."
The Office of Export Controls will run restricted party screenings on all non-U.S. citizen individuals named by hosts, or OU employees, students, trainees, scholars, and affiliates who are hosting a non-citizen for a visit, and will make recommendations where appropriate.
The agenda states: "The Policy on Hosting non-citizen visitors on campus is designed to enable OU to host while reducing risk and protecting the interests of OU; its employees, students, visitors; and the community. This Policy also provides a means to track Non-Citizen Visitors for compliance and risk management purposes."
The document also offered 15 exclusions wherein non-citizens will not require screenings, which had senate members questioning why the policy exists in the first place.
Sen. Jonathan Stalling, Harold J. & Ruth Newman Chair of U.S.-China Issues and professor of International and Area Studies, expressed concern about the policy because he hosts many non-citizens.
"Of course, we have a lot of international visitors. Going through the list of exclusions, it seems to exclude everyone I could think of, and I found that to be quite peculiar, and it was very difficult to see who, or what this is targeting," he said.
Stalling said that he wasn't sure about whether he would be affected by the policy because his visitors will most likely fit under one of the listed exemptions, but he expressed concern that this kind of policy would deter professors from inviting non-citizen visitors to OU.
"It's very strong language, and it seems like it could deter hosts for visiting scholars if they are not reading the fine print," he said. " It did send some chills down my back when reading about how you have to make sure you are supervising them for every minute and that you're liable for anything that happens to them when unsupervised."
Boris Apansov, OU professor of math, expressed concern about the language of the document. He wanted to know how the policy would affect relationships between OU faculty and outside scholars.
"It would be an embarrassment for us to ask these type of questions when we are asking leading experts in some fields whether they are citizens or not," said Apansov. "If they are not citizens, then what should you do? Treat them as foreigners?"
He called the policy "unjustified draconian measures," at least until representatives of the school qualify the scope of the screenings.
Hunter Heyck, professor of the history of science, said that the policy exists because universities are being targeted by foreigners for their information.
"There were some high profile cases ... of people having accessed information they shouldn't have and that was blown into a large political issue, and so I think basically, similar offices at universities have been instructed to come up with policies like this by the federal government," Heyck said.
He argued that this kind of policy protects institutions from non-citizens who are seeking access to restricted, or classified research or information for which they do not have clearance.
