Two American elite universities, Yale and Harvard, are now in the crosshairs of the Education Department. Why? They accepted money from foreign countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran and not reporting the gifts or contracts, which federal investigators estimate to be at least $6.5 billion.
The story, which appears in The Wall Street Journal, explains that “universities are required to disclose to the education department all contracts and gifts from a foreign source that alone or combined are worth $250,000 or more in a calendar year.” The Journal does not explain what, if anything, the money was intended for. What we do know is that it has not been used to lower tuition costs for students.
Last month, Charles Lieber, chairman of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, was arrested and criminally charged with making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the U.S. Defense Department about his ties to a Chinese government program to recruit foreign scientists and researchers.
China wasn’t the only country of concern. The investigation, which began in 2019, showed one university had a relationship with Kaspersky Lab, a Russia-based cybersecurity company whose products the Trump administration has banned government agencies from using amid concerns it worked with Russian intelligence.