For decades, federal law has required U.S. universities to disclose the sources of large foreign donations to the federal government. But the Biden administration sparsely enforced the law, allowing foreign nationals from adversarial countries to funnel cash to top American schools and stay anonymous.
In some cases, it’s unclear whether the schools themselves are keeping close track of the foreign money they accept. In early February, the Washington Free Beacon filed state records requests with 11 public universities for the identities of foreign donors that gave the schools more than $20,000 in the past two years. Some, like the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Michigan, said it would take months of searching or more than $1,500 in fees to provide an answer.
That won’t fly with President Donald Trump, who last week signed an executive order outlining more robust enforcement of the Higher Education Act of 1965’s foreign donor disclosure requirements. In some cases, it already appears to be spurring action. Another recipient of the Free Beacon‘s records requests, the University of California, Berkeley, for weeks did not respond. On Friday, shortly after Trump signed the order and launched a foreign funding investigation into the school, it sent a list of major foreign donors from 2023 and 2024.
Trump’s order calls on Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take appropriate steps to reverse or rescind any actions by the prior administration that permit higher education institutions to maintain improper secrecy regarding their foreign funding,” a reference to the Biden administration’s unusual policies that shielded foreign donors. Historically, the Department of Education disclosed foreign donor names in a public database. During the Biden administration, it stopped publishing names, instead only releasing the countries where each donation came from.
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