FOLLOW THE MONEY: Trump Administration Exposes Billions In Foreign Funds Going To Woke Universities

The Trump administration has officially pulled back the curtain on the staggering amount of foreign influence-buying occurring on American college campuses. This week, the Department of Education launched a new transparency portal — foreignfundinghighered.gov — revealing that adversarial and “illiberal” regimes have funneled billions into the very institutions currently serving as ground zero for anti-American and anti-Israel radicalism.

The data is damning. China, including Hong Kong, has pumped nearly $6 billion into U.S. higher education, targeting elite institutions like Harvard, New York University, and Stanford. According to House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, this isn’t philanthropy — it’s a calculated effort to “transfer critical research, influence, and academic talent” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

While the Trump administration is now prioritizing enforcement, the report highlights a catastrophic lapse under the previous administration. Data has revealed that foreign donations surged during the Biden years, with the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) noting that the “floodgates opened,” creating what experts call a “national security crisis.”

Furthermore, the scale of the deception is massive. While the portal lists billions in disclosed funds, previous reports suggest that hundreds of universities have illegally withheld information on an estimated $13 billion in additional contributions.

It is no coincidence that the universities receiving the most cash from hostile actors are the same ones currently exploding with antisemitic protests and “illiberal” faculty agendas.

• Qatar, a nation that harbored Hamas leadership, remains the top contributor with over $6.5 billion in total funding.
• Cornell University alone took $2.3 billion from the Qatari regime.
• Northwestern and Texas A&M have also raked in hundreds of millions from the Middle Eastern state.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in April 2025 that required institutions of higher education to “report significant sources of foreign funding,” while noting, “But, because section 117 has not been robustly enforced, the true amounts, sources, and purposes of foreign money flowing to American campuses are unknown. From 2010 to 2016, according to one study, universities failed to disclose more than half of reportable foreign gifts. Even when foreign funding is reported, its true sources are often hidden.”

Trump pointed out that during his first term, “the Department of Education opened investigations on 19 campuses from 2019-2021, which led universities to report $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign funds. Yet the prior administration undid this work, moving the Department of Education’s specialized investigatory work on foreign funds to a unit ill-equipped to perform it, undermining investigations, and hindering public access to information on foreign gifts and contracts.”