The Trump administration is investigating Harvard and Yale for potentially underreporting financial donations from foreign countries.
The Department of Education expanded an ongoing review of U.S. universities to include the two Ivy League institutions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Federal investigators allege that Harvard and Yale are part of a string of universities that did not report at least $6.5 billion in funds received from countries such as China and Saudi Arabia.
U.S. universities are “multi-billion dollar, multi-national enterprises using opaque foundations, foreign campuses, and other sophisticated legal structures to generate revenue,” an Education Department document said. The document accused universities of actively soliciting funds from governments and other institutions hostile to the United States.
Harvard did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. Harvard told the Wall Street Journal that the university was drafting an appropriate response to news of the investigation.
Yale received a request for records related to the investigation from the Education Department on Tuesday, the university’s spokeswoman, Karen Peart, told the Washington Examiner. Peart added that the university is working on a more detailed response.
The Trump administration says that Yale has not reported at least $375 million in foreign funding after the university failed to file reports for three years from 2014 to 2017.
Last month, federal authorities arrested Harvard’s chemistry department chairman, Charles Lieber, for allegedly hiding his work with a Chinese university while getting paid $1.5 million from the foreign government. While Lieber was working with the Chinese, he also took more than $15 million in funding from the U.S. to conduct research.
