哥大校长抗议FBI监视外国学生公开信全文翻译_风闻

编者按

是的，FBI的确在劝说美国高校的教职工们，对自己学校的中国留学生和中国学者们进行监视。

早在去年，美国就曾有报道称FBI官员访问了美国大学联盟中的超过10所高校，建议这些学校的教职工们对自己校园中与部分中国研究机构和中国企业有联系的学生和学者进行监视，与此同时，FBI官员还希望这些高校能够密切关注“可能用于国防领域的”、有中国人参加的研究项目的进展。

尽管FBI仅将这一行动描述为“我们就国家安全事务而持续进行的接触的一部分”（part of our ongoing engagement on national security matters），对于遭遇问询的高校来说，事情并非如此。今年6月，印第安纳大学副校长弗雷德·凯特向媒体透露，“这不仅仅是搜寻可疑行为的问题——它实际上针对的是一些特定的国家，以及来自那些国家的人”。

8月29日和9月4日，哥伦比亚大学校长伯灵格（Lee Bollinger）在《华盛顿邮报》与哥伦比亚大学官方网站上两次发表公开信，对FBI说“不”。

以下为伯灵格在《华盛顿邮报》发表的公开信全文翻译

原标题：No, I won’t start spying on my foreign-born students

联邦调查局（FBI）近日加强了对大学校园研究工作的审查——包括我们（哥伦比亚大学）。

为了阻止知识产权被非法转移给外国竞争对手，执法机构和情报机构正在鼓动美国学者和行政人员制定更加严格的规定，来监控外国学生和访问学者，尤其是华裔学生与华裔访问学者。

随着学生们重返校园，这些监视手段，正企图将政治经济层面的担忧和宪法第一修正案所保证的自由置于冲突之中。

诚然，在网络安全和生物恐怖主义等国家安全领域，政府资助的学术研究确实敏感。同样，这些与美国公司合作进行的研究而带来的商业创新成果，也成为了非法技术转让的主要目标，它们值得被保护。

大学有义务遵守现有的安全规定、合理地加强安全措施，并在明显发现疑似间谍行为时，充分配合执法部门和企业研究伙伴。在过去，的确发生过几起教研人员将敏感的知识产权泄露给外国政府的个案，所以某种程度上来说，我们在这方面还做得不够好，我们能，也必须做得更好。

然而，在校园里进行的研究，只有一小部分属于“机密”。事实上，学术研究的目的本就是共享，也就是将学术成果发布到公共领域，以推动人类进步。突破性的医学发现、使世界各地几百万人免于饥饿的农业创新、互联网、人工智能，这些成果都来自公开的、基于大学的研究。

因此，外国人无须跨越大半个地球“渗透”进我们这些优秀的大学，来获取我们最新的发现，除了一些极其重要的学术发现之外，通过搜索引擎，他们完全可以在舒适的办公室或者宿舍，细读同行评议的学术期刊。或者，他们也可以访问美国专利商标局的网站，了解专利保护申请提供的创新成果的详细信息。

因此，作为一个花了50年时间倡导言论和集会自由的人，当得知我们大学的教职工，或许还有学生，竟然被要求去监控外国学生和同事的行为时，我感到极度忧虑。这与我们的初心背道而驰。

大学的使命，是培育出开放的氛围，来促进思考、实验和创造。美国的高等教育之所以令全世界艳羡，正是因为它在保障开放性和多元化方面无人能及。它吸引、并欢迎着世界上最聪明的头脑们，无论他们来自哪里，国籍是什么。

换句话说，美国的大学模式是一种战略优势，而不是对美国竞争力的阻碍。我们的行政人员、教授和研究人员不是，也不应该成为美国执法部门的触手。具有讽刺意味的是，在我看来，我们在FBI眼中最薄弱的一环，恰恰是我们最大的优势。

在我担任校长的哥伦比亚大学，有来自150多个国家的成千上万的学生和教师。作为主流研究型大学的管理者，我们不能肆意限制学术自由。大学文化与系统审查并不兼容，这或许可以解释，为什么即使是到访我们校园的执法官员，也只是告诉我们应该保持警惕，却很少提供规范性指导。

海外竞争对手盗用知识产权确实是一个严重的问题。但对外国学者进行监视是个错误的解决方案。在我看来，如果执法机构有某些合法关切，那么他们应该识别并监控那些基于真正的威胁而被他们锁定的“可疑人员”，而不是担心整个国家的人。

我在高等教育界的许多同事，以及两党联合成立的美国反知识产权窃取委员会，都提倡一种更为有效的做法，那就是扩大向我们高校的外国毕业生发放的绿卡的数量。如果允许的话，这些拥有国际背景的学者中许多人，特别是在科学、技术、工程和数学领域的学者，毕业后更愿意留在美国，为美国公司工作，这样还可以为美国的经济增长和繁荣做出贡献。但根据目前的规定，当他们完成学业后，我们很难让他们留下来。他们带着在这里学到的先进知识，回到自己的国家，而这些知识未来可以为美国的竞争对手，提供商业策略的参考。

我们学院和大学的使命是，在广泛的议题上不断地进行公开的征询。我们的高等教育机构，应改为美国成为这个世界上有史以来最具创新精神的国家努力，而不是相反。

以下为公开信英文原文

The FBI has stepped up its scrutiny of research practices at college and university campuses — including mine.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies determined to thwart the illegal transfer of intellectual property to foreign rivals are encouraging U.S. academics and administrators to develop more robust protocols for monitoring foreign-born students and visiting scholars — particularly if they are ethnically Chinese.

With students returning to campus, these policing attempts thrust economic and political concerns into fierce conflict with First Amendment freedoms.

To be sure, government-funded academic research in such national security realms as cybersecurity and bioterrorism is justifiably sensitive. Likewise, academic research conducted in collaboration with U.S. companies — a principal target of most unlawful technology transfers — leads to commercial innovations that warrant protections. Universities have an obligation to comply with existing security protocols, identify sensible ways to bolster them, and cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities and corporate research partners if clear acts of espionage are suspected. To the extent we are falling short in any of these areas — and yes, there have been isolated incidents of academics sharing sensitive intellectual property with foreign governments — we can and must do better.

At the same time, however, only a fraction of the research conducted on campus is “secret.” Indeed, the reality is just the opposite. Academic research is intended to be shared — released into the public domain to advance human progress. Groundbreaking medical discoveries, agricultural innovations credited with saving billions of people worldwide from starvation, the Internet, artificial intelligence: All are the result of publicly available, university-based research.

With students returning to campus, these policing attempts thrust economic and political concerns into fierce conflict with First Amendment freedoms.

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Consequently, a foreign national need not fly halfway around the world to “infiltrate” our great universities and learn about our latest insights and findings: With some notable exceptions, she can type words into a search engine and peruse peer-reviewed academic journals from the comfort of an office or dorm room overseas. Or, similarly, she can visit the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website, where applications for patent protection provide detailed descriptions of recent innovations.

And so, most worrisome to me, as someone who has spent five decades advocating freedom of expression and assembly, is the notion that university personnel — and perhaps students themselves — should be asked to monitor the movements of foreign-born students and colleagues. This is antithetical to who we are.

The mission of a university is to foster an open atmosphere conducive to speculation, experimentation and creation. American higher education is the envy of the world not in spite of, but because of, its unrivaled commitment to openness and diversity. Attracting — and welcoming — the brightest minds in the world, regardless of nationality or country of origin, is what we’re all about.

To put it another way, the U.S. university model is a strategic advantage, not a hindrance to American competitiveness. Our administrators, professors and research scholars are not, and should not become, an arm of U.S. law enforcement. Ironically, what the FBI apparently considers our great vulnerability is, in my view, our greatest strength.

At Columbia University, where I am president, thousands of students and faculty represent more than 150 countries. We stewards of major research universities couldn’t contain intellectual freedom even if we wanted to. The incompatibility of university culture with systematic scrutiny may explain why even law enforcement officials who have visited our campus have offered little prescriptive guidance, instead offering that we should be vigilant.

The unauthorized use of intellectual property by overseas competitors is a serious problem. But the surveillance of foreign-born scholars in this country is the wrong solution. If law enforcement agencies have legitimate concerns, it seems to me that they should identify and monitor those they designate as “suspicious people” based on real threats, not broad worries about entire nationalities.

A more effective approach — advocated by many of my colleagues in higher education as well as the bipartisan Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property — is to expand the number of green cards awarded to foreign-born graduates of our great colleges and universities. Many of these international scholars, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, would, if permitted, prefer to remain in the United States and work for U.S.-based companies after graduation, where they could also contribute to the United States’ economic growth and prosperity. But under the present rules, when their academic studies are completed, we make it difficult for them to stay. They return to their countries with the extraordinary knowledge they acquired here, which can inform future commercial strategies deployed against U.S. competitors.

The mandate of our colleges and universities is to pursue open, robust inquiry across a wide range of topics. Our institutions of higher learning should do more — not less — of what made the United States the most innovative nation in the history of the world.