EXCLUSIVE: Ed Department to Probe More Universities That Conceal Funding Received From Foreign Adversaries

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Education Department will undertake more investigations into universities that fail to accurately disclose funding from foreign adversaries, a senior Department of Education official told The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Education has already launched investigations into Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania for what it says are untimely and inaccurate foreign financial disclosures, in violation of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.

But there’s only a 40% compliance rate among universities, so the Education Department plans to conduct further investigations. All top recipients of federal research dollars should be on notice, the official said.

There is a direct pipeline between hostile foreign governments and American universities. But the foreign country giving the most money to universities to access American research is China. Under the Biden administration, very little was done to protect U.S. research from being used to benefit adversaries abroad, the official said.

Students from foreign adversaries, such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, pose a very clear national security threat, the senior official said.

That’s in line with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement in May that he planned to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

The president said last month that he would allow 600,000 Chinese students into American universities. The White House clarified that Trump wasn’t proposing an increase in student visas, but that the 600,000 referred to two years’ worth of visas.

“It’s simply a continuation of existing policy,” a White House official explained.

The official said there should be a whole of government effort to properly track the access to federally funded research that students from countries of concern have.

U.S. government agencies can coordinate to counteract countries of concern, including China, according to the official.

Universities are required to timely and accurately report foreign gifts and contracts over $250,000 from any country to the Education Department.

The department can then share that information with other federal agencies, particularly grant-making agencies for research, such as the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, and NASA. 

Those agencies can then compare the records the Education Department collects about foreign involvement at the universities with the frequently inaccurate or incomplete information submitted in applications for grants.

Chinese students are often required by law to share the research and technology expertise they gather with the Chinese government and military, the official said.

In one case detailed in the department’s recent report on protecting universities from foreign influence, an American aerospace engineering professor at a university in Michigan accepted a Chinese student’s request to study with him.

It was later revealed that the student was associated with a college for China’s military officers and pressured the professor to share sensitive information about his work to use it for military satellite applications.

Universities that are funded by foreign adversaries often allow that to influence their decision-making, according the official.

Foreign governments use donations to get sought-after lab seats in Ivy League science, technology, engineering, and math programs. Universities funded by Middle Eastern adversaries have often been hesitant to condemn antisemitic, anti-Israel activity. 

By enforcing the Higher Education Act, the Trump administration has reminded universities of their accountability to their biggest donor—the American taxpayer, the official told The Daily Signal.

The Department of Education’s threats to universities’ taxpayer funding send the message not to take the American people’s money for granted anymore, the official said.

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