Agents of Chaos at Columbia University
18th September 2024
Sometimes the zeitgeist of a tumultuous era is concentrated in a single place. At the opening of this school year, Columbia University is managing to combine the blights of Chinese Communist influence, anti-Semitism, incompetent leadership, and intellectual disintegration by the first day of class. Columbia combines the worst aspects of higher education at one time and place. This whirlwind of incompetence and foreign influence provides revisionist powers such as Russia, China, and Iran the air to proclaim and act on their anti-American narratives.
In 2021, authorities in India began investigating a media portal company called Newsclick over suspected money laundering and ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). When the company’s offices were searched, India discovered emails between Newsclick and the CCP, and alleged that monies flowed to Newsclick from an American businessman and an alleged Chinese influence agent named Neville Singham. India was concerned that China used the company to build a “media narrative” supportive of Beijing while the two nations fought hand-to-hand battles in the Himalayas around the disputed territory of Ladakh and Tibet.
Last year, the Daily Beast reported that Singham funded “International People’s Media Network” news agencies. The Daily Beast stated that the International People’s Media Network includes news outlets replete with pro-Russian influencers from propaganda outlets like Radio Sputnik, and RT America. The media network was noted as working with the think tank Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, run by Dr. Vijay Prashad, who has defended China’s treatment of the Uighurs. The Daily Beast reported that Prashad and the pro-Russia and pro-China media outlets met at East China Normal University to speak to representatives from Venezuela, Iran, and Russia to underscore a need to “challenge the predominance of U.S., Japanese, and European outlets.” Singham lives in Shanghai and has worked for Huawei.