Daniel Golden has specialized for the past two decades in higher education coverage. His work—including his Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal articles on college admissions, and subsequent book, the bestseller, The Price of Admission, and his award-winning Bloomberg News series on for-profit colleges—has exposed how institutional greed taints educational decisions that ought to be driven by merit.
"SPY SCHOOLS: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities" continues in this vein, this time examining the alliance between academia and global intelligence communities, and the implications for national security and academic freedom that this relationship entails. Taking advantage of open campuses, espionage services from countries such as China, Russia, and Cuba vie for recruits and sensitive research. The FBI and CIA reciprocate, developing sources among international students and faculty. Universities ignore or even condone this interference, despite the tension between their professed global values and the nationalistic culture of espionage, because international students make up a larger and larger share of the institutions’ revenues. Golden’s vigorous reporting skills meet a compellingly readable narrative in SPY SCHOOLS.