I. Report on Foreign Funding under the U.S. Department of Education
Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal gave money to Georgetown University to establish the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The Center proclaimed to promote Islam’s image in the United States, publish findings through scholarship, and hold academic events. However, it brewed controversy from its inception. Congressman Frank R. Wolf wrote a letter to Georgetown’s President, Dr. John J. DeGioia, expressing concern that the Center could advance Islamic ideology in a fashion that belittles opposition, threatens academic integrity, and improperly influences future civil servants. It would exercise “soft power” in political science terms.
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires American colleges and universities to publicly disclose, each year, foreign gifts and contracts valuing $250,000 or more. The United States Department of Education on October 20, 2020, reported findings concerning Section 117. During an online webinar conference from Washington, DC, open for public viewing, it was revealed that $6.5 billion of foreign money was previously unreported by leading American universities. Lack of transparency of foreign funding has dangerous consequences for academic integrity, national security, and human rights.
In 1986, Congress first required U.S. institutions of higher education to publicly report their foreign gifts and contracts to the U.S. Department of Education. At the time, donations from Arab countries were building a Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, a project which strongly motivated the drafting of the statute. Post 9/11 donations to Middle Eastern studies centers increased concerns, and a Senate committee directed the Department to ensure “the integrity of the reporting requirements” and confirm “donations are reported and categorized correctly.” Beginning in 2009, the increased flow of foreign money, especially from the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China was notable.
During the Department of Education broadcast in the conference, its Chief Investigative Counsel Paul Moore and Senior Counsel for Information and Technology Bucky Methfessel discussed the report and its findings. Dr. Charles Small, Executive Director of ISGAP, who has done extensive research on the link between foreign funding and rising antisemitism and has presented at the Department of Justice on the topic in the past, also participated.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Andrew Lelling, who chairs the Attorney General’s Subcommittee on Cybercrime and Intellectual Property and is on the steering committee for the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, discussed his efforts at the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the vulnerabilities of American universities to nefarious foreign influences. Since 2012, institutions reported anonymous donations from China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia totaling more than $1.14 billion. It was reported that less than 300 of the approximately 6,000 U.S. institutions self-report foreign money each year. Most foreign funds flow to a relatively small number of large institutions.
Included in the report in 2018, the Justice Department charged nine Iranians affiliated with a Tehran-based company called the Mabna Institute for hacking into 144 American universities to steal sensitive data and intellectual property on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. First, the Iranians conducted online reconnaissance of university professors. Second, the Iranians sent “spear phishing” emails. Third, the conspirators used stolen account credentials to obtain unauthorized access to victim professor accounts, through which they then exfiltrated intellectual property, research, and other academic data and documents from the systems of compromised universities, including, among other things, academic journals, theses, dissertations, and electronic books. The defendants targeted data across all fields of research and academic disciplines, including science and technology, engineering, social sciences, medical, and other professional fields. At least approximately 31.5 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property from compromised universities were stolen and exfiltrated to servers under Iranian control. (Indictment, United States v. Rafatnejad et al., No. 18-cr-00094 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 7, 2018).
Since June 28, 2019, the Department of Educaion has initiated 12 civil investigations to ensure institutional compliance with Section 117. The named institutions were Georgetown University, Texas A&M University, Rutgers University, Cornell University, University of Maryland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and most recently, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Texas, Case Western Reserve University, Fordham University, and Stanford University.
The Department’s review shines a spotlight on previously unknown foreign gifts and contributions, their prevalence and magnitude, and the consequences of porous or nonexistent institutional oversight and lax federal enforcement. Stanford University, for example, has reported over $64 million in unidentified, anonymous Chinese donations since May 2010. Demonstrating foreign financial involvement with top U.S. research institutions, Harvard University alone has received over $1 billion of foreign funding since 2012.