27.02.2026 Norway: University blocks job applicants from four ‘risk’ nations

The Progress Party (FrP) has praised a recent decision by a Norwegian university to exclude all job applicants from Iran, China, Russia and North Korea – the so-called “risk countries” – in its recruitment strategy for posts requiring security clearance. It has used the decision to revitalise the party’s call for a nationwide embargo on research collaborations with those four countries by all universities. At an internal meeting in January, the University of Southeast Norway (USN) decided to move from signalling that it “might” exclude applicants from the four countries to requiring all applicants from these countries to be excluded before they are even considered, as reported by Khrono. 

Simen Velle, member of the education committee in parliament and spokesman for the FrP, praised the new guidelines at the USN.  “This demonstrates that the university takes security threats seriously and listens to clear warnings from Norwegian security authorities. The government must also soon understand that we are now living in a completely new security policy situation,” he told Khrono.

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But Minister of Research and Higher Education Sigrun Aasland bluntly rejected Velle’s criticism. “The government is working systematically on security in Norwegian research and higher education, and this was also a main theme in the white paper ‘Secure knowledge in an uncertain world’, which I presented to the Storting last year," Aasland said. Regarding China and cooperation, Aasland said: “China has strong knowledge communities that it is useful for us to cooperate with, for example, related to climate and environment, health and food safety. “It is not new that knowledge cooperation with China also involves both security and ethical issues and entails a risk for intelligence activities. We therefore have a close dialogue with the institutions about this balance between openness and caution,” she said.

Written by Jan Petter Mykelbust 
Source: University World News 
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