A few weeks ago, I reported that Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno was a member of the board of the Cleveland Foundation when it doled out millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other left-wing organizations.
It turns out that the Cleveland Foundation wasn’t the only board Moreno—who is locked in a tight GOP Senate primary with Sec. of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan—sat on that made questionable (to say the least) decisions. While Moreno served on the Board of Trustees at Cleveland State University, the school established a partnership with the very questionable Confucius Institute.
Moreno, who was anti-Trump before he embraced the former president, had called Trump a “fake Republican” who stokes “hatred and fear” and blamed “ignorance in our society” for his popularity. Nevertheless, Trump has endorsed him in the race and Moreno is now singing a different tune on China.
Moreno was appointed to Cleveland State University’s Board of Trustees by former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the son of a mailman, and served from 2011-2018. During his tenure, Cleveland State supported a Confucius Institute on campus. CSU’s website notes, “The Board has the authority to act as the governing body in all policy matters of the University requiring attention or action.” One imagines that that would include protecting the university from infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PJ Media reviewed meeting minutes for the years Moreno served on the board (including as chairman and vice chairman) and found no evidence that he objected to the Confucious Institute or the university’s entanglement with the Chinese government.
A CSU Confucius Institute newsletter announced in Feb. 2013 that then-President Ronald Berkman signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Beijing’s Capital University of Economics and Business “on the Council of Confucius Institute” and noted that in Dec. 2012, the director of the CI at CSU had attended a conference in Beijing. The theme of the conference? “To advance the integration of Confucius Institute into universities and communities.”
In June of that year, the board approved a 25% pay raise for Berkman by voice vote. The resolution noted that under his leadership, the university “developed a new model for international collaboration, focused on new relationships with institutions in India and China.”
At a September 2013 board meeting that Moreno attended, the Report of the President presented highlighted “an increase in international students, and that he and Dr. Zhu, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of Graduate Studies, will be visiting four universities in China and developing a 2+2 program.” Zhu, by the way, was a major proponent of the Confucius Institute.
A CSU Provost’s Task Force explained in 2008, “The Confucius Institute, funded by [the] Chinese government, prepares and supports teachers of Chinese foreign language and promotes economic development in Ohio through its agreements with Chinese institutions and exchange programs.” [Emphasis added]
Make no mistake: the Confucius Institutes don’t have America’s best interest in mind when they’re embedding themselves in U.S. universities.
In 2020, the U.S. State Department, at the direction of then-President Trump, designated the Confucius Institute in the U.S. as a “foreign mission,” saying that it was “an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms.”
US @StateDept designates #China’s government-funded Confucius Institutes as “foreign mission”. Many on college campuses, teaching Chinese language and culture.https://t.co/9Dy9FpojnA pic.twitter.com/sB8nW003oc
— Eunice Yoon (@onlyyoontv) August 13, 2020
Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote that the “Institutes are funded by the PRC and part of the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence and propaganda apparatus.” You may recall that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis outright banned the Confucius Institutes at his state’s college campuses.
Rachelle Peterson, director of policy at the National Association of Scholars, told The Lantern in 2021 that “because they allow the Chinese government to control what is taught about China, they threaten the academic freedom and integrity of American educational institutions.”
In fact, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2019 prohibited the Department of Defense “from obligating or expending funds for Chinese language instruction provided by a Confucius Institute.” The 2021 NDAA “limited any DOD funding to schools that host a Confucius Institute.”
An Oct. 2023 GAO report notes that while the FBI hasn’t yet found enough evidence to deem Confucius Institutes a national security threat, “It informs U.S. universities about the potential exploitation of Confucius Institutes and the risk this poses to U.S. universities.” The FBI warned of the “long-term risks that could stem from Institutes and PRC government soft power campaigns… there are still concerns the PRC could use them as a soft power tool, which could result in conflicts of interest for the university, create pressure on university officials to avoid offending PRC partners, or lead to overt PRC requests to censor topics or events.”
Despite his past tenure on the CSU board, Moreno is now bashing China in a campaign ad, saying that “The China that exists today was created by America. American policies from both sides of the aisle. The reality of what we’ve done is that we’ve created a monster.” The ad insists that he will be “tough on China.”
How much of Moreno’s tough talk on China has to do with a deep desire to protect the United States from China, and how much of it is nothing more than campaign slogans that he hopes will give him an edge in the primary?