Secretary of State Marco Rubio said all the right things last week after Hong Kong issued arrest warrants for 19 pro-democracy activists in other countries, including in the U.S.

"The extraterritorial targeting of Hong Kongers who are exercising their fundamental freedoms is a form of transnational oppression," Rubio declared in a statement. "We will not tolerate the Hong Kong government's attempts to apply its national security laws to silence or intimidate Americans or anyone on U.S. soil."

But we already tolerate the transnational oppression of one large group on our soil: Chinese students. And for the most part, our universities have kept silent about that.

That's because of the billions of dollars that Chinese students bring to American colleges, of course. We're already facing an expected decline in Chinese enrollment because of the Trump administration's threats against international students, which higher-education leaders have rightly condemned.

But if we really cared about those students — and not just their tuition fees — we would also speak out against the Chinese government's extraterritorial targeting of their fundamental freedoms. Anything less makes us look petty, scared and small.

In a report issued last year — titled "On my campus, I am afraid" — Amnesty International showed how Chinese and Hong Kong students in the U.S. and Europe faced surveillance and intimidation from Chinese........

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