The National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) has published the results of an anonymous online survey addressed to representatives of foreign cooperation offices of Polish HEIs on the issue of ‘foreign interference’.

“Foreign interference” is an action carried out by or on behalf of a foreign state entity that is coercive, covert, fraudulent or corrupt and contrary to the sovereignty, values and interests of the European Union.

Participants in the NAWA survey asked whether Polish universities experience this problem and whether they have procedures in place to prevent, disclose and respond to ‘foreign interference’. The respondents also assessed whether “foreign interference” is an important issue for Polish universities.

The following were used as examples of foreign interference in the survey: unlawfully obtaining information of interest to the foreign entity (e.g. stealing data from the university’s system); conducting disinformation, agitation or other types of campaigns (e.g. in social media) in line with the interests of the foreign entity; undermining values important to the university, perceived as contrary to the interests of the foreign entity; influencing decisions made in cooperation for the benefit of the foreign entity.

Two out of 52 Polish HEIs participating in the survey recorded foreign interference in the last 5 years. They were “Proposal for cooperation combined with disavowing an American scientific society and representing the interests of the Chinese higher education system”, and “Threatening to break off cooperation if we refused to undertake an action that, for substantive and organisational reasons, was difficult for our institution to implement”.

57 % of the respondents indicated that ‘foreign interference’ was a very important or important problem for Polish HEIs, for 29 % it was moderately important and 14 % considered it as not very important or unimportant. 

Adrian Andrzejewski