Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the National Association of Scholars’s weekly CounterCurrent newsletter on August 24, 2026. My colleague Kali Jerrard does an excellent job each week covering the latest developments in higher education, and I’m happy to crosspost her work here. To subscribe or browse past editions, visit the CounterCurrent archive.

In May, National Association of Scholars (NAS) Senior Fellow for Foreign Affairs and Security Studies Ian Oxnevad published Behind the Climate Curtain, a report detailing how California maintains climate ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through the University of California (UC) system. Oxnevad’s research is paying off.

Last week, U.S. Senators Rick Scott, Mike Lee, Marsha Blackburn, and U.S. Representative Young Kim sent a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asking for an official federal investigation into California and the state’s climate agreements with the CCP. 

The announcement references our report prominently, 

The National Association of Scholars’ latest report, Behind the Climate Curtain, documents an alleged years-long pattern in which Governors Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom tied California’s climate regulators to Beijing’s Party-State, embedded PRC-linked institutions inside the state’s regulatory apparatus, and deliberately structured these arrangements to circumvent President Trump’s decisions in climate diplomacy.

Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from entering any “Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation” and bars any “Agreement or Compact” with a foreign power without Congressional consent. Behind the Climate Curtain found that California signed multiple memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with China, instating a partnership between UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University. The California-China Climate Institute (CCCI), which formalized the partnership in 2019, not only brokered closer ties between China and California and helped to bring about conferences and business ties for policymakers and business leaders, but it “also helped integrate Chinese experts into California’s regulatory agencies.”

Oxnevad ultimately found that China has benefitted from both the CCCI and UC system’s formal partnership with Tsinghua University on climate policy research and development. “Research from the CCCI offers Beijing insight into California’s climate regulations so that China can better emulate them,” he said, and “these policies in California itself have benefitted Chinese companies and reduced American economic independence.”

Readers should peruse the report itself, as it details the ties between California, the UC system, and China more thoroughly than what is possible here. However, it is worthwhile to highlight the four policy recommendations from Behind the Climate Curtain:

• Amend and Expand the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
• Open Federal investigations into officials and regulators who have engaged in formalized agreements with China.
• Institute “ratio funding” on private funds for public universities to help prevent university capture and increase public accountability.
• Enact Federal and state legislation to mandate that all employees of regulatory agencies are US citizens.

Behind the Climate Curtain is not the first time NAS has pulled back the mask on China’s activities within American higher education. NAS has an arsenal of research and reports that uncover malign foreign influence in American higher education. Almost a decade ago, NAS was the initial whistleblower on Confucius Institutes (CIs), revealing that they were a front for Chinese soft power influence within colleges and universities and not the immersive Chinese language and culture program they were purported to be. Because of our work, CIs were shut down, though our work continues to uncover new attempts by China to subvert and influence American higher education and policy—evidenced by the findings of Behind the Climate Curtain. 

Last week’s call for the investigation into California’s ties with China is the first step to undo years of subterfuge. The announcement specifically asks for an official investigation to be opened, evaluate the need for civil litigation against California and UC Regents, issue information requests from a variety of sources and offices, conduct a FARA review of current and former officials, and coordinate with the Department of Commerce and others on export control to review technology exchanges under the agreements. Hopefully, the Department of State and the Department of Justice will take heed. 

We are happy to see that policymakers appear to be taking this threat to America’s national security and its citizens seriously. 

For more on international issues and higher education, be sure to check out Minding the Campus, “Jason Arday and the Dukes and Dauphins of DEI,” “Academic Who Accused Jason Arday of Plagiarism Is Suspended,” and “The University that Answers to the U.S. President.”