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Thanks for those observations Ron, and I note you accept that reliance on funding from overseas sources is a problem and the stifling of debate about the vices of other civilizations is inappropriate.

On the funding issue, I would qualify your view by noting that not all foreign funding sources are equally dangerous. I don’t have a problem with genuinely non-political bodies devoted to cultural interchange like the Goethe Institutes or the Alliance Française. The Confucius Institutes are an altogether different kettle of fish – soft propaganda arms of a totalitarian regime seeking global hegemony.

However I disagree with you about the Ramsay courses. Why do you presume it would be about pushing one-sided propaganda, ignoring the warts in Western history? The CEO of the Ramsay Centre has stressed this will not be the case. In an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald he said this:

‘What you come out of the degree with is a sense of just how various, diverse, rich, long-lasting, extraordinary, dynamic are our intellectual, artistic and philosophical traditions,’ he says. ‘That doesn't mean you are some kind of right-wing robot that says how fantastic the West is and everybody else is hopeless, as if that was somehow a political position to take. You learn how important critical argument and political debate has been in the West. These very people who are saying these things about this degree are able to say it because we live in a society that enables you to do it.’
https://www.smh.com.au/education/the-unenviable-task-ahead-for-ramsay-centre-boss-simon-haines-20180622-p4zn1h.html

You might like to check out this indicative curriculum for the Ramsay course at Wollongong University.
https://www.ramsaycentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Indicative-Curriculum-BA-Western-Civilisation-updated.pdf

Does that strike you as crude propaganda? I would have thought it admirably fulfills the stated goal of providing a balanced treatment of the Western intellectual and cultural tradition.

I would add a couple of other points:

Firstly, as I understand it in all the successful negotiations with institutions so far it is accepted that the university will have the final say on matters concerning staffing and curriculum. That was actually a concern from my point of view as it seems to leave open the possibility of ‘institutional capture’ resulting in a course about Western civilization morphing into a course promoting the vilification of Western civilization.

Secondly even if the programs did deliver a sympathetic treatment of Western Civ, this would be a minuscule counter to the vast body of hostile treatments that permeate campuses these days.