After years of warnings, U.S. finally investigating secret foreign funding of American universities

Alexander Pease:

‘They can no longer expect to ignore the law with impunity’

An academic group that helped expose the reach of Chinese-funded propaganda in American universities has a message for academia: We told you so.

The Department of Education’s new investigation into universities for allegedly hiding foreign funding “is sending a powerful signal to colleges and universities: They can no longer expect to ignore the law with impunity,” Rachelle Peterson, policy director of the National Association of Scholars, told The College Fix.

The probes into Georgetown University and Texas A&M concern university assets from governments and companies in China, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to June 13 department letters to the universities obtained by the Associated Press.

The nonprofit Qatar Foundation comprised nearly all the foreign funding reported by Georgetown ($33 million) and all reported by Texas A&M ($6.1 million) last year, according to the AP.