To the editor:

On Aug. 19, in a front-page article, the Journal-World reported the decision of the University of Kansas to completely end its $330,000 annual support for Kansas Public Radio’s Audio-Reader program. How sad that KU will take funds from a program that enhances the life of blind, visually impaired and print-disabled Kansans while continuing to financially support the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) KU Confucius Institute (CI).

The American Association of University Professors has called for CIs to be closed because they “function as an arm of the Chinese state” and undermine academic integrity. The National Association of Scholars has recommended that they be closed for the same reasons. In 2017 the NAS also noted that the Chinese staff working within CIs may likely be assigned the task of carrying out surveillance on students from China. This year FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in a congressional hearing that the FBI is investigating CIs as centers for conducting espionage against our country.

Given this situation, where should KU look first when reducing expenditures? Should helping the CCP achieve its strategic goals come before giving blind and visually impaired Kansans a brighter, more fulfilling life? Last year Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little thought so, and drastically cut Audio-Reader funding while continuing to support her CCP partner’s CI. Now the moral compasses of Vice-Chancellor Reggie Robinson and Chancellor Douglas Girod both seem to be pointing at the same wrong path taken by Gray-Little.

Kansans deserve more situational awareness and better judgment than this from the leaders of their flagship university.

Gary J. Bjorge,

Lawrence