The Education Department added Stanford University and Fordham University to its growing investigation into the influence of the Chinese Communist Party and other foreign funding on campuses nationwide.
Reed Rubinstein, the acting general counsel for the Education Department, sent a nine-page letter to Stanford University and a six-page letter to Fordham University on Monday. According to copies reviewed by the Washington Examiner, the agency led by Secretary Betsy DeVos is concerned about connections between the schools and the Chinese government and isn’t convinced they are being fully transparent about their foreign funding.
Rubinstein asked the universities to hand over a host of documents about foreign gifts, contracts, and any connections with the Chinese Communist Party.
The letter to Stanford drew attention to Stanford Visiting Researcher Song Chen being arrested for lying on her visa to conceal her ties to the People’s Liberation Army, and Rubinstein noted that the school “has extensive business interests in and very deep entanglements with the PRC.” He scrutinized the Stanford Center at Peking University, noting that the Chinese university “is directly controlled by Chinese Communist Party officials and recently even amended its charter to reinforce its long-standing role as a tool of the Chinese communists.” The letter also pointed to Stanford’s Confucius Institute, emphasizing that “there is a very grave concern regarding the ‘grand mission’ of each Confucius Institute, particularly at America’s leading scientific universities” and said that Confucius Institutes “are well known to actively facilitate one of the world’s most repressive, authoritarian regime’s insidious efforts to bolster its influence and image.”
A Stanford spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that “Stanford has received the letter from the Department of Education. We believe the university is in compliance with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act and are surprised by the unfounded allegations in the letter to the contrary. We look forward to engaging with the Department of Education on this issue.”
The letter to Fordham made note of its School of Business’s Global Finance Collaboration Program, which partners with Shanghai University, China’s Southeast University, Wuhan University, and Xiamen University and has a longtime association with Peking University in Beijing.
Bob Howe, the assistant vice president for communications at Fordham, told the Washington Examiner that “the University just became aware of the review today” and that “we will of course cooperate fully with the Department of Education on the review.”
The Education Department lawyer separately responded on Monday to an inquiry from Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, noting that schools have anonymized $8.4 billion in foreign money and, since 2010, colleges and universities have “hidden the true source” of at least $600 million from China, $268 million from Qatar, $205 million from Saudi Arabia, and $75 million from Russia. Rubinstein called this “unacceptable” and said the Education Department is pushing all schools to disclose their foreign funding in full.
Gaetz had specifically asked about the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which has strong ties to presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
The Education Department said it is concerned by murky foreign influence wherever it might appear.
“The Department is deeply concerned by the economic and national security risk posed by anonymous foreign donations, whether made to the University of Pennsylvania, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, or anywhere else,” Rubinstein told Gaetz. “The evidence is dark foreign money increases the probability U.S. colleges and universities will become platforms for undisclosed and unregulated foreign influence over teaching, research, and academic freedom and foreign access to our research enterprise. We believe the risk is especially acute when dark foreign money flows to domestic or international policy ‘centers’ on our college and university campuses and/or to the ‘faculty’ or ‘fellows’ thereof who might be in a position to drive U.S. political or policy changes. Here especially students, parents, and taxpayers need and deserve a higher education industry that fully complies with the law and provides the public maximum transparency.”
Earlier this month, House Republicans asked Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Delaware, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania to hand over records related to their foreign funding.
The Education Department announced individual investigations into foreign funding and possible illicit foreign ties at Georgetown University and Texas A&M University in June of 2019, Cornell University and Rutgers in July, MIT and the University of Maryland in September, Harvard and Yale in February, the University of Texas and its connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in April, and Case Western Reserve University in May.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Rob Portman, released a 109-page bipartisan report in November, concluding foreign countries “seek to exploit America’s openness to advance their own national interests” and “the most aggressive of them has been China.” It found China used its Thousand Talents Program to exploit access to U.S. research labs and academic institutions.
The subcommittee released an initial report in February 2019 warning about foreign funding and Chinese influence both in K-12 classrooms and university campuses nationwide, noting that “foreign government spending on U.S. schools is effectively a black hole.” These reports spurred the Education Department into action.
Multiple members of the Chinese military have been charged by the Justice Department in recent weeks for concealing their ties to China’s military and allegedly committing visa fraud while acting as students or researchers at U.S. universities. The Justice Department’s China Initiative aims to combat Chinese espionage, and the United States has arrested and charged a number of scientists, including Harvard’s chemistry department chairman, Charles Lieber.
A number of Republican senators proposed a ban on issuing visas to graduate students in technology fields, while House Democrats have raised concerns that ethnically Chinese scientists are being racially profiled. The Trump administration announced in May it would revoke thousands of visas held by Chinese graduate students who had ties to the Chinese military.
