U.S. finally investigating secret foreign funding of American universities

‘They can no longer expect to ignore the law with impunity’

An academic group that helped expose the reach of Chinese-funded propaganda in American universities has a message for academia: We told you so.

The Department of Education’s new investigation into universities for allegedly hiding foreign funding “is sending a powerful signal to colleges and universities: They can no longer expect to ignore the law with impunity,” Rachelle Peterson, policy director of the National Association of Scholars, told The College Fix.

The probes into Georgetown University and Texas A&M concern university assets from governments and companies in China, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to June 13 department letters to the universities obtained by the Associated Press.

The nonprofit Qatar Foundation comprised nearly all the foreign funding reported by Georgetown ($33 million) and all reported by Texas A&M ($6.1 million) last year, according to the AP.

Federal law requires U.S. universities to report contracts and gifts from foreign entities that total $250,000 or more, but past filings from the pair “may not fully capture” that information, the department wrote.

Peterson has done much of the leg work to pull back the veil on Confucius Institutes, funded by China but hosted by American universities, in recent years. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has emphasized a related issue: threats to academic freedom from foreign outposts of American universities.

All universities should strive to “make public the conditions of the grants they receive regardless of the location of their source,” Sarah McLaughlin, senior program officer for legal and public advocacy, told The Fix when asked about the new federal investigation.

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