The growing geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China has significantly impacted cross-border academic research collaborations. In a Policy Forum, Richard Lester and colleagues – a cohort of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – argue that a major challenge for US universities moving forward in this political climate is to manage these pressures while preserving open scientific research, open intellectual exchange, and the free flow of ideas and people. Lester and colleagues say US universities must proactively develop their own risk management frameworks for collaborating with China – frameworks rooted in educational and research best practices, and in institutional and academic values. They share the approach they developed in 2021, at the request of the MIT President. Their strategy outlines clear lines that will not be crossed in collaborations with China, which include not training students or researchers from China's military or defense universities, not pursuing research relationships with Chinese corporations that provide services with military applications or are known to participate in activities that suppress human rights, and not participating in talent recruitment programs designed to transfer US technology to China. By developing such a risk management strategy, opportunities for positive US-China research and academic collaborations become clearer, enabling US universities to have a valuable role in articulating and defending the open collaboration values that have allowed US institutions to flourish and become world leaders in scientific research for the global good. "Even if the overall trend in relations between the two counties is toward less rather than more engagement, there are important areas of research and education in which the academic community, the nation, and the world would be better off with more rather than less United States-China scientific collaboration," write the authors.
Reporters interested in related research and commentary, please see the following: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh8832; https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo6563; and www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1218.
