As a US-China trade war begins to take shape due to President Trump’s tariffs on a multitude of Chinese goods, American universities are beginning to suffer due to a new xenophobic red scare targeting Chinese culture.

It’s been clear since the election of Trump that the administration is beating the war drums against Iran, and politicians and U.S. media are once again working full-stop to attack what is seen as an axis forming between China, Russia, and the Iranians. This hysteria is made clear in articles that warn of “Chinese infiltration” in American classrooms, serving as the latest attack on universities that provide useful international services to students.

The latest target of anti-Chinese fear mongering is the Confucius Institute, an organization on campuses across the U.S. that provides Chinese language and culture learning services. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that prohibited the funding of Confucius Institutes as well as limited funding to any university that had a location on campus. These attacks against the Confucius Institute came amid accusations that the organization serves as a propaganda wing of the Chinese Ministry of Education.

It seems convenient that these accusations arise during a period of growing anti-Chinese sentiment and an expanding trade war between the U.S. and China. When an organization such as the National Association of Scholars, which explicitly states in its Issues and Ideals that it’s “anti-multiculturalism” and against “abuses of academic freedom and individual rights,” praises the removal of the Confucius Institute, that should sound alarm bells.

It’s ridiculous to think that the Confucius Institute, an organization that provides a useful service to students across the U.S., can be removed for supposed violations of academic freedom while an organization like the NAS can exist to repeatedly drain universities of what little academic freedoms students and professors have left.

There also exists a double-standard between business relationships deemed as dangerous and those deemed as ordinary. The Confucius Institute was criticized for its ties to the ZTE Corp which has faced steep criticism from the U.S. government due to its trade with Iran and North Korea, countries whose continued existence frustrate the U.S. If ZTE Corp and, by extension, China are guilty of trading with countries with spotty human rights records, where is the criticism of the continued trade of American arms to Saudi Arabia, a country that’s currently massacring Yemeni children with US bombs? American arms manufacturers continue to work closely to recruit talent from American universities, most notably the close partnership between Lockheed Martin and UCF.

It would be preposterous to think that American students are being brainwashed by Chinese propaganda within American universities and not by any company with a dubious record that needs more engineers to program a school bus-seeking-missile.

If the Confucius Institute is guilty of anything, it’s guilty of being Chinese in a nation that is increasingly xenophobic and looking for a fight. It seems tired to point towards the endless hypocrisy within American ideology, but the contradictions are too infuriating to ignore. Organizations that explicitly oppose academic freedom like the NAS or weapons manufacturing behemoths like Lockheed Martin can freely lobby politicians and run willy-nilly on university campuses, while organizations that provide a useful service for students like the Confucius Institute end up as collateral damage in the latest wave of American jingoism.

The real mystery is where the “free speech” right vanishes when politicians seek to limit academic freedom and defund universities with organizations they disagree with. If there was ever a case of American universities bowing to the pressure of the most-aggrieved demographic in America, conservative politicians, this is it.

So farewell Confucius Institute. You dreamed of a world where students can share language and culture across borders; a world far more sophisticated than ours.