Foreign Influence on Federally-Funded Research
Wake Forest University values global engagement at all levels, both in scholarship & education, and for Wake Foresters going abroad as well as for visiting students and scholars from outside the US on Wake’s campus.
However, in conducting international collaborations both here and abroad, we must be mindful of the current regulatory landscape that informs such interactions.
The U.S. Government is increasing oversight to protect U.S. research investments from undue foreign influence and to guard against those seeking to compromise U.S. national and economic security by undermining our primacy as a global leader in research and technology development.
The U.S. Government is concerned about activities that fall into two main categories:
- Recruitment of scholars at U.S. institutions into “foreign talent programs” or “foreign talent recruitment programs”, such as the Thousand Talents Program of China.
- Foreign countries recruitment of their own scholars to study or conduct research at U.S. institutions to transfer knowledge from federally funded research and/or from intellectual property to their country of origin. These countries may also recruit scholars coming to the U.S. from countries other than their own.
Wake Forest University’s Support of Global Engagement
Wake Forest University has a strong commitment to the goal of supporting international opportunities for our faculty and students, both educationally and via institutional scholarship. We value the experiences of our faculty and students when they go abroad to conduct scholarship outside the U.S. and for our students to experience international cultures and institutions as important components of their education in the spirit of Wake Forest’s Pro Humanitate motto.
Wake Forest has a long history of appreciating the contributions of international scholars to the climate and culture at our campus, and we continue to encourage and support scholarly collaboration moving forward. Global engagement has been a major theme of our strategic vision as we consider ourselves global citizens, committed to a better understanding of international cultures and communities. Our students are strongly encouraged to study abroad as part of their undergraduate education, and we support our more advanced student scholars at the graduate level to study ‘overseas’ via Fellowships that are both internally and externally funded as well as through their mentor’s international contacts. The whole Wake Forest community benefits from the broader spectrum of perspectives gained by both the inward-bound and outward-bound scholars associated with the university, and we hope to further strengthen Wake’s diversity of scholars, intellectual ideas, and faculty and student experiences through increased global engagement in the future.
Guidelines for Foreign Entity Relationships – Do’s and Don’ts for Faculty & Staff