President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday requiring American universities to be more transparent about any foreign donations they accept.
The order, “Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence At American Universities,” calls on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to seek information from universities about the source and purpose of foreign funding and make such details available to the public. The Trump administration has been putting schools under a microscope in recent months, probing for information on foreign funding, international professor and student recruitment and anti-Semitic protests.
The order also tasks the U.S. Attorney General with enforcing the disclosures and holding schools accountable.
“Protecting American educational, cultural, and national security interests requires transparency regarding foreign funds flowing to American higher education and research institutions,” Trump’s order reads. “It is the policy of my Administration to end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions, protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.”
An investigation during President Trump’s first term revealed that 19 schools failed to report a total of $6.5 billion in foreign funds, the press release stated.
“Colleges and universities have a legal duty to report foreign gifts and contracts and, in President Trump’s first term, the Department of Education held them to it,” McMahon said in a statement following the signing of the order. “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. 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.”
“President Trump’s Executive Order will safeguard American interests on campus and protect students,” McMahon continued. “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.”
Several reports have found that universities often fail to properly disclose funding accepted from China and other nations, or are often not required to state exactly where funds come from or how they are used. An Open the Books report released Thursday, for instance, revealed Harvard University allegedly received over $1 million from “Palestinian territories” since 2017, prompting questions about the role these influences could have played in the school’s antisemitic protests.
“Even when foreign funding is reported, its true sources are often hidden,” the order stated.
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