Canberra cancels foreign teaching and research deals

Australia needs an “ombudsman” to champion research institutions whose work attracts attention from national security agencies, according to former Australian National University (ANU) vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt.

The Nobel laureate said he had “no idea” why foreign affairs minister Penny Wong had cancelled ANU’s Joint International Science College with Shandong University in China, in the first termination ordered under the 2020 Foreign Relations Act.

Wong also harnessed the legislation to rule out a University of Queensland (UQ) agreement with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study a family of “sodium channel accessory proteins”. The research would have examined the use of proteins from a native plant for pain relief purposes, according to a UQ spokeswoman.

In April, Wong also imposed “must not enter” determinations on the University of Sydney’s proposals to accept data from the Northern State Medical University in Russia and the Republican Scientific and Practical Centre for Pulmonology and Tuberculosis in Belarus. The data transfers, which never proceeded, would have been part of clinical research to help bridge an “evidence gap” in the World Health Organisation’s battle against tuberculosis.

Sydney said its researchers would have received anonymised patient data on drug‑resistant tuberculosis. “No data was to be shared with any Russian or Belarusian institutions,” a spokeswoman said.

Asked why research into pain relief and tuberculosis threatened Australia’s national interests, Schmidt said the reasons were “above our pay grade. These decisions are made at the highest levels of government,” he told the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Summit.

Australia is fortunate to have “excellent” national security agencies, he said. “It doesn’t mean they always get things right, but I definitely trust them. You’ve got to trust your government to do the right thing.”

Schmidt said his 2018 approval of ANU’s agreement with Shandong University had followed “a lot” of due diligence. “It is an undergraduate partnership with no research capability at all. It was therefore of almost no risk. There are hundreds, hundreds of such agreements administered by people in this room. It was singled out for a reason. I have no idea why, and I will not know why because that’s what security agencies are like. That’s part of the world we’re in.”

He said research institutions needed someone “deep in the agency who looks out for the interests of universities and argues our side, because we’re never going to be there to do it. If it happened to that programme, I have a feeling there’s going to be more of them.”

In late July, Shandong University was added to a US Department of War blacklist of “foreign institutions engaging in problematic activities”. Four affiliates of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were also added to the list, along with institutions in Russia and Iran.

Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson said the ANU had made an agreement with a university “that wasn’t on some list, and maybe it is now”. National security is “never set and forget”, Thomson told the summit. “We just have to be nimble.”

Sources told Times Higher Education that UQ’s joint pain relief research may have been vetoed over fears that it could be weaponised. The university said the proteins involved were not on the Defence and Strategic Goods List of restricted technologies, and the agreement had been registered more than 30 months ago.

The study was to have been supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant which has now been suspended, according to ARC CEO Ute Roessner. “[We will] work with the university to determine if that project can go ahead without a partner,” she told the summit.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com