Trump signs order obliging schools to more fully disclose foreign funding

“This financial infiltration enabled foreign governments to steal taxpayer-funded intellectual property and reshape how our elite campuses teach about Israel and the Middle East,” Linda McMahon, the U.S. education secretary, said.

By JNS

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday requiring colleges and universities to better disclose their funding from foreign sources or risk losing federal funding.

The Higher Education Act of 1965 in part “requires institutions of higher education to report significant sources of foreign funding,” but since the relevant section “has not been robustly enforced, the true amounts, sources and purposes of foreign money flowing to American campuses are unknown,” Trump stated.

“From 2010 to 2016, according to one study, universities failed to disclose more than half of reportable foreign gifts,” the president stated. “Even when foreign funding is reported, its true sources are often hidden.”

Trump charged that the Biden administration undid the work that his first administration did—including opening probes of 19 campuses, leading to schools reporting $6.5 billion in “previously undisclosed foreign funds”—and moved the U.S. 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.”

The executive order calls on the U.S. education secretary, the U.S. attorney general, and others to compel schools to issue “complete and timely disclosure” of their foreign funding.

Linda McMahon, the U.S. education secretary, stated that “colleges and universities have a legal duty to report foreign gifts and contracts.”

“In President Trump’s first term, the Department of Education held them to it. Unfortunately, in the last four years, the Biden administration undermined the structures the president built to do this critical work, allowing nations like China and Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to U.S. universities with little to no oversight,” McMahon stated.

“This financial infiltration enabled foreign governments to steal taxpayer-funded intellectual property and reshape how our elite campuses teach about Israel and the Middle East,” the secretary said.

“The Department of Education will ‘follow the money,’ put a stop to malign foreign infiltration, secure the research enterprise and restore American campuses to marketplaces of ideas rather than hosts for foreign propaganda.”

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, stated that the order “foreign entities, like the Chinese Communist Party, anonymously funnel billions of dollars into America’s higher education institutions—exploiting these ties to steal research, indoctrinate students and transform our schools into beachheads in a new age of information warfare.”

“I am glad the Trump administration understands the grave importance of this threat,” Walberg stated.

“This is a game changer. It will do wonders for generations of Americans,” wrote Jonathan Schanzer, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, of the executive order.

“Here’s looking at you, Qatar and China. Can’t wait to find out how much money you plowed into American higher education,” Schanzer wrote. “After that, can’t wait to learn how much you spent on K-12.”

American collegesforeign influenceTrump administration