John Moolenaar is asking Columbia University, as he has asked many others, to abort its relationship with a CCP United Front operation; in this case, the China–United States Exchange Foundation.
Such operations are influence operations, efforts that combine spying, bribery, strong-arming and/or persuasion to get individuals and organizations to believe and do what the Party wants them to.
“As Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the CCP…I consider CCP-affiliated entities’ malign influence campaigns that exploit our academic institutions and students through United Front organizations and its insidious strategy of co-option, coercion, and concealment to be serious threats to America,” Moolenaar advises acting Columbia president Claire Shipman in a November 4, 2025 letter.
It has come to my attention that the Greater China Initiative, an officially recognized student organization affiliated with Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, is promoting a January 2026 exchange trip to China called “China Trek” that is co-sponsored by the ChinaUnited States Exchange Foundation. In the application form, prospective recruits, who are exclusively Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs students, are informed that “CUSEF will cover transportation, board, and lodging expenses.” A Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing identified the CUSEF as “a united front-linked organization that advances Chinese Communist Party interests.”…
As the House Select Committee and U.S. intelligence officials have warned in the past, CUSEF is an instrument of the CCP’s approach to political warfare, including influence operations intended to shape Americans’ views toward the People’s Republic of China government….
The fact that the exchange program with CUSEF was organized by a student group described as “active in generating programming” for the school and “most closely affiliated with the Institute” also raises serious questions about the university’s policies on student group recognition, and particularly its regulations on foreign funding for recognized student organizations. Columbia should not recognize or promote student groups that accept foreign funding or form partnerships with a foreign agent known to be engaging in malign influence operations….
This is not the first time that CCP-affiliated entities attempted to recruit students at Columbia University, and it will likely not be the last….
Moolenaar urges immediate severing of “any ties that the university or its student groups have with CUSEF” and a commitment to rigorously assessing the foreign funding and foreign partnerships of student groups. He enjoins the school to at the very least stop accepting or permitting partnerships and funding from organizations that exist to promote the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
