Trump Administration Wants Colleges to Reveal Foreign Donors

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The Trump administration is not letting up in its determination to make American colleges and universities shape up and fly right. First, it has asked the universities to supply the administration with information on what they have been doing to record, punish, and prevent antisemitic acts on their campuses. Second, the administration has asked them to furnish the government with information on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs that are enforced at the schools, so that their observance of the law, or failure to do so — the law as set out in the 2023 Supreme Court decision that struck down Affirmative Action programs for college admissions — can be judged. And now the Trump administration wants colleges and universities to reveal what foreign money they have accepted, with particular attention to moneys coming from China and Qatar, two countries that do not share our values, and are, indeed, hostile to us.

More on this request for more information on foreign “influencers” of American universities can be found here: “Trump order will prevent Qatari, Chinese influence at schools, ed. sec. says,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, April 24, 2025:

A Wednesday executive order from US President Donald Trump will require transparency in foreign university funding, with Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon emphasizing that the order would address the problem of Chinese and Qatari influence in American academic institutions.

Trump’s order called for McMahon to take all appropriate action to enforce preexisting laws on foreign funding to universities and to demand the disclosure of more details about the donations, their sources, and purposes.

McMahon and Attorney-General Pam Bondi were ordered to hold institutions that failed to properly disclose foreign funding accountable, and to conduct audits and investigations where appropriate.

The order explained that legislation on foreign funding in higher education had not been robustly enforced, with blame leveled at former US president Joe Biden’s administration. Trump accused Biden of undermining investigations into foreign funding by moving the task out of the Education Department, and supposedly undoing his previous term’s work.

The previous Trump administration had opened 19 investigations into undisclosed foreign funds, according to the order, leading to the reporting of a further $6.5 billion in foreign funding.

Trump’s new administration suggested that as much as half of reportable foreign gifts were not being disclosed, and funds that had been reported supposedly did not detail their true sources.

A Wednesday White House Fact Sheet claimed that $60b. in foreign gifts and contracts had flowed into American academic institutions over several decades, and only 300 institutions self-reported about the matter each year….

$60 billion given by foreign donors to American colleges and universities is a staggering sum. It is rarely given out of the goodness of their hearts, but funding from certain countries is more worrisome than that from others, because this money forms part of sustained campaigns to buy up influence on campuses, by paying for faculty to teach subjects that will be in line with the donors’ desires. Foreign donors can, provide scholarships to their own nationals, judged politically reliable, to study in America, and influence their classmates, or provide scholarships to American students to study in their countries, where they will be subject to round-the-clock propaganda. The Chinese might pay an American university to take Chinese students or faculty, who will then be able both to spread propaganda, but also, if in the sciences, potentially steal secrets from American researchers. This has already been happening far too often. scale. Qatar has poured money into Middle East Centers filled with native speakers of Arabic, where certain subjects — “contemporary Palestinian literature,” or “the literature of Palestinian resistance,” or “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ Reconsidered” — might be the subject of courses that would please the donors in Doha.

The request had also sought a list of visiting researchers, scholars, students, and faculty, and details about foreign students who had been expelled or had their credentials cancelled.

These requests do no more than request of universities what they were already required to do under the 1965 Higher Education Act. That is, universities are required to report to the government on “foreign gifts, grants, and contracts” received, and provide information as to the individuals involved in such donations. Why should this be controversial? Doesn’t the government have a right — a duty — to make sure that malign foreign governments are not managing to plant agents in American universities, either to propagandize for those governments, or for their favorite causes, or to nurture, among the American faculty who receive funding from them, a cadre of professors who may brainwash American students? How many departments of Middle Eastern Studies have even one faculty member who is well-disposed to Israel? And what about the continuing scandal of Chinese researchers working at American universities, insufficiently vetted, who have turned out to be stealing the work of American researchers?

Qatar may be the largest foreign donor to American colleges. It is also the main supporter of the terror group Hamas, to which it has donated billions of dollars for weapons and to pay the salaries of combatants. Most of Hamas’ leaders live securely, and luxuriously, in Doha. Of course the Qataris will want to support Middle East Studies programs that can be staffed with faculty who will be well disposed not just to the Palestinians, but also to Hamas. Think of the effect of the key professors — Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi, and Hamid Dabashi — at Columbia’s Department of Middle East Studies, whose courses would not be out of place at Bir Zeit University, and who have managed to prevent the hiring of any faculty who do not share their pro-Palestinian views. The Qatar Foundation has been pouring money into Columbia, and if the federal government continues to withhold $400 million in funding for the university, Qatar could easily step in and make up the difference.

All the administration wants is to be kept fully informed of what foreign money has been, and is being, spent on American higher education, what programs or individuals are being funded, what sums are being provided, and whether there is any reason for alarm about the effects of that funding coming from countries that have very different values from ours, and do not wish us well, such as China, such as Qatar. What’s wrong with that?