institute. The Business Spectator concludes that the Xu Lin's hardline behavior highlights one of the biggest problems for Beijing's charm offensive. "It still relies on officials like Xu, who still think and act like party ideologues who like to assert their authority and bully people into submission." Less than a week later, Pennsylvania State University also cut ties with the Confucius Institute after coming to the conclusion that "its objectives were not in line with the Institute's". In December 2014, Stockholm University, the first university in Europe to host a Confucius Institute, announced it was terminating the program. Press coverage of the Braga incident in the Swedish press was said to have influenced the decision. "Generally it is questionable to have, within the framework of the university, institutes that are financed by another country," said the university's chancellor. In the same month, the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations held a hearing entitled "Is Academic Freedom Threatened by China's Influence on U.S. Universities?". Chairman Chris Smith said, "U.S. colleges and universities should not be outsourcing academic control, faculty and student oversight or curriculum to a foreign government", and called for a GAO study into agreements between American universities and China. On 5 December 2014, PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying denied the House testimony and said "We have assisted with supplying teachers and textbooks at the request of the U.S. side but have never interfered with academic freedom." Controversy continued in 2018 as U.S. Congress members from Texas wrote a letter to four universities in that state urging them to close their Confucius Institutes. Texas A&M did so shortly after receiving the letter. Throughout 2018 and 2019, all of the institutes in Florida were closed: the University of West Florida, the University of North Florida, the University of South Florida, and Miami Dade College. A U.S. law passed in 2019 that prohibits universities hosting Confucius Institutes from receiving funding for Chinese language studies from the Department of Defense led to more closures of Confucius Institutes. Unable to obtain a waiver from the Department of Defense, Indiana University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Rhode Island, San Francisco State University, the University of Oregon, Western Kentucky University, Arizona State University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and San Diego State University closed their programs in 2019. In 2020,