Matthew Richards

Dear Committee Members: I urge you to oppose HB 1561, which would ban Chinese citizens from attending state institutions of higher learning. This overly broad bill unfairly singles out Chinese students among all the international students attending public universities. It was my pleasure to learn alongside international students when I was an engineering student in New Hampshire, and there are many wonderful Chinese students who bring valuable contributions to the classroom who would no longer be able to do so under this poorly thought-out law. Any bill protecting our institutions of higher learning from threats such as cyber warfare or property theft ought to be narrowly targeted to specific security practices of those institutions. The arbitrary exclusion of students from one specific country strikes me as ineffective "security theater" which is not likely to make our institutions any safer from the threats this bill claims to protect them from. I encourage the authors and sponsors of this bill to go back to the drawing board and commission a study that works with cybersecurity experts, counterterrorism experts, and university administrators to determine what steps should be taken to address these threats. There are likely a plethora of non-legislative ways to address these problems that are being overlooked. I thank you for your attention, and urge you once again to OPPOSE HB 1561.