Anonymous ID: d539e2 Aug. 3, 2020, 7:40 p.m. No.10175085   🗄️.is đź”—kun

House Republicans seek information about Chinese funding from Harvard, Yale, and other universities

 

A trio of House Republican leaders gave Harvard, Yale, and a handful of other universities a week to hand over documents and other information on their foreign funding amid increased scrutiny about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party and other foreign entities on U.S. campuses. The GOP letters told the schools that “we write to further understand the effects of adversarial foreign direct investment in the U.S. higher education system” and noted that an Education Department investigation “has uncovered over $6.5 billion of previously unreported foreign donations” to U.S. institutions of higher education. Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, James Comer of Kentucky, and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina — the ranking members on the Judiciary, Oversight, and Education committees, respectively — requested Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Delaware, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania provide answers about all of their gifts from and contacts with the governments of or businesses and nationals from China, Russia, Qatar, Iran, and Saudi Arabia by next Monday.

 

The letters sent to the schools referenced a May 20 briefing from the Education Department, in which the agency “raised concerns about this level of IHEs dependency on foreign funding from adversarial states and the inherent national security risks” and noted that “the Committee learned that many countries use donation agreements or contracts (agreements) with IHEs, professors, or researchers (recipients) to leverage their money into some type of benefit, or quid pro quo.” The Republicans said that “some recipients” of foreign funding also “alter their decision making based on the donations received.” “During the briefing, the Department informed the Committee that after reports the COVID-19 pandemic may be the result of negligence in a lab in Wuhan, China, two universities that have contracts with the Chinese Communist Party aligned Jilin University publicly defended the CCP and claimed those reports were false,” the GOP letters warned.

 

Jordan, Comer, and Foxx also provided details on the amount of anonymous foreign funding from China, Russia, Qatar, Iran, and Saudi Arabia received by each school since 2015: 31 gifts or contracts totaling $101,177,826 to Harvard; 18 gifts or contracts totaling $22,049,302 to Yale; 30 gifts or contracts totaling $23,059,862 to the University of Chicago; six gifts or contracts totaling $28,558,456 to the University of Delaware; 15 gifts or contracts totaling $40,388,603 to NYU; and 92 gifts or contracts totaling $62,204,380 to UPenn. The Education Department said in June that it is “spearheading … foreign source compliance and verification efforts” with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the helm and noted that it has uncovered “numerous” university contracts with Chinese government-subsidized companies and “at least one” with “direct contracts with the Chinese Communist Party itself.” The agency said it had discovered that schools have “anonymized” the identities of the donors of at least $1.14 billion in foreign funds flowing in from China, Russia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

 

The Education Department announced individual investigations into foreign funding and possible illicit foreign ties at Georgetown University and Texas A&M University last June, Cornell University and Rutgers in July, MIT and the University of Maryland in September, Harvard and Yale in February, the University of Texas in April, and Case Western Reserve University in May.

Moar here:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house-republicans-seek-information-about-chinese-funding-from-harvard-yale-and-other-universities

CHINA’S IMPACT ON THE U.S. EDUCATION SYSTEM

https://www.portman.senate.gov/sites/default/files/PSI%20Report%20China%27s%20Impact%20on%20the%20US%20Education%20System.pdf

Threats to the U.S. Research Enterprise: China’s Talent Recruitment Plans

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-11-18%20PSI%20Staff%20Report%20-%20China's%20Talent%20Recruitment%20Plans.pdf

INFORMATION ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE’S CHINA INITIATIVE AND A COMPILATION OF CHINA-RELATED PROSECUTIONS SINCE 2018

https://www.justice.gov/opa/page/file/1223496/download

https://republicans-judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Combined-University-Letters.pdf