Improving Higher Ed Through Better Open-Records Laws. When universities can delay and dodge records requests, a new system is needed

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | November 2, 2022 | Neetu Arnold and Ian Oxnevad

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It is no secret that American higher education is in crisis due to a lack of affordability, growing irrelevance, and the ideological conformity that prevails in today’s classrooms. Less well-known is the pervasive foreign influence, particularly from authoritarian countries, on today’s college campuses. China has its Confucius Institutes (CIs) to project soft power, while Middle East Studies Centers (MESCs) can also facilitate foreign influence. Little from these programs supports American values of natural rights or freedom of thought. In fact, these programs can pose actual national security threats.

The National Association of Scholars’ (NAS) work in documenting foreign influence has resulted in the closure of more than 100 CIs. And we continue to expose universities that refuse to follow their legal obligations to report foreign money, as when Texas A&M failed to disclose $100 million in Qatari and Russian research funds. The use of open-records laws to obtain research contracts and memoranda of understanding has been crucial to our work in this area. But throughout our pursuit of transparency, we have repeatedly encountered serious flaws with open-records laws and how they are implemented on college campuses.

ublic universities are subject to state open-records laws, which are modeled after the federal government’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Open-records laws allow the general public to access, upon request, documents that are in the possession of government entities. While this may seem straightforward, the devil is in the details: There are many ways by which higher-education institutions can manipulate the provisions in these laws to delay, obfuscate, and outright deny information that is rightfully owed to the public.

State and federal lawmakers should consider reforming open-records laws to close these loopholes and prevent conflicts of interest from arising within the FOIA system.