Category: Foreign Influence, Department of Education, Higher Ed;
Reading Time: ~4 minutes
Shadows of Influence: Uncovering Hidden Foreign Funds to American Universities, the latest report by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), written by Neetu Arnold, unearths some staggering truths about unreported foreign gifts to American colleges and universities, and the lack of transparency by the U.S. Department of Education (ED).
Foreign influence on American campuses can be an insidious force when coming from less-than-benign countries. “At NAS,” Arnold writes, “we believe the flow of foreign money from adversarial countries into our universities threatens national security and the academic freedom required for an intellectually stimulating collegiate environment.”
After the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, American colleges and universities exploded in pro-Palestinian protests. Claims of Israel committing genocide in Gaza spread quickly, especially on campuses. Faculty and students fueled the pro-Hamas narrative, while most university leaders stayed silent until the problem grew too big to ignore.
Questions were raised surrounding the widespread support of Hamas, and how this propaganda took hold so quickly on American campuses. Arnold aptly states,
When American college students stump for foreign terrorist organizations and authoritarian governments, we must wonder where and how they receive such propaganda. The hundreds of millions spent by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, and Russia are a good place to begin the search.
After October 7, Qatar emerged as a focal point behind the spread of pro-Hamas propaganda on American higher education campuses. Qatar is known to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, and is hostile to the country, nor do they necessarily have America’s best interests at heart. Arnold initially sounded the alarm on the woefully underreported foreign gift donations by Qatar to American colleges and universities in 2022, showing that Qatar’s financial investment and influence “led to compromises on freedom of expression to appease Qatar’s authoritarian government.” Since then, the ED and Biden administration have done little to require transparency from institutions receiving these funds.
For years, Qatar has donated billions of dollars to American universities and think tanks, most of which went underreported. For instance, by 2017 Texas A&M reported just $131 million in received Qatari funding, but a 2020 investigation by the ED revealed that the actual number was over $600 million—a major discrepancy to say the least.
Section 117 under the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires colleges and universities to report gifts, contracts, and grants totaling more than $250,000 in a given calendar year. The ED is tasked with overseeing and enforcing this reporting, but according to the information NAS has uncovered through more than 100 public records requests and years of research, the ED has laxed on its enforcement over the years. Most recently, the Biden administration has ceased its investigation into unreported or underreported funding, and the ED shut down its foreign funds database on June 28 of this year. “As a result,” Arnold states, “Americans do not know the full extent to which universities benefit from foreign funds, what those funds support, and which foreign governments influence our universities.”
This is why NAS published a better Foreign Donor Database, to fill in the gaps and give a more detailed scope of where foreign gifts go—and subsequently, what they influence.
Based on the data NAS compiled, Arnold suggests that commitment to enforcement will be necessary to ensure foreign funds transparency in the future. She finds that under the Obama administration, starting in 2010, reporting numbers were off, with only $1.8 billion reported, while our records show $3.9 billion in reportable foreign funds. Under the Trump administration, reporting numbers increased significantly, with a sum of $4.7 billion in foreign funding reported—note that enforcement of Section 117 was finally taken seriously after many years. Lastly, under the Biden administration, investigations into underreporting were shut down soon after he assumed office, and enforcement of reporting has been lax since. Where schools reported a total of $1.6 billion from 2021-2022 to Section 117, we found that number should have been at least $2.6 billion. The devil is in the details.
The ED must do better, which is why this report provides four recommendations to ensure the transparency and enforcement of Section 117—and the ED would do well to implement them.
- Make donor names visible to the public;
- Make each gift’s purpose visible to the public;
- Regularly audit a random sample of universities for foreign funds disclosure compliance;
- Penalize universities that fail to disclose their foreign funds.
“Section 117 could help lead the way should the desire to strengthen American security and better American education overcome the lobbying power of higher education and foreign governments,” says Arnold. The ED should heed these words.
Until next week.
Kali Jerrard
Communications Associate
National Association of Scholars
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