Tag: universitites

Palantir Quietly Lands In Education Department Through Foreign Funding Portal

Palantir is expanding its reach into the Education Department, where the data analytics and software giant is helping develop the agency’s new portal for universities across the country to report foreign donations.

The quiet move marks the technology company’s latest expansion into federal government work, particularly in data management services.

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed Palantir was involved as a subcontractor for its revamped foreign funding portal, which is set to be rolled out early next month.

The agency announced the portal project this week, but did not name the vendors behind it. The portal will serve as a central place for schools to disclose to the department any foreign-source gifts and contracts worth $250,000 or more, the agency said.

Palantir is a subcontractor to Monkton, a northern Virginia-based computer and network security company, the spokesperson told FedScoop. According to federal spending records, the Education Department awarded a contract to Monkton in September that obligated $9.8 million for the design, development, and deployment of a “Section 117 Information Sharing Environment Capable of Providing Greater Transparency.” Palantir, however, is not publicly listed as a subcontractor on the project.

Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires schools to disclose foreign gifts and contracts over $250,000.

The contract with Monkton could cost the agency up to $61.8 million, more than six times the cost of the modernization project for the ed.gov website, which was allocated $10 million in 2022.

Speculation over the portal began after the agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer registered a new federal domain, foreignfundinghighered.gov, which was discovered by a bot tracking new government domains.

When FedScoop visited the link shortly before 10:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, the website showed a blocked network alert, which read, “The network connection you are using is not in your enrollment’s ingress allowlist. Please contact your enrollment administrator or Palantir representative.”

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Antifa-Linked Leftist Arrested for Hockey Stick Attack on University of Colorado TPUSA Chapter Secretary

Boulder police have arrested 36-year-old Taylor James Rose of Arvada, Colorado, for assaulting the University of Colorado Turning Point USA chapter secretary with a hockey stick while on rollerblades.

The unprovoked attack, which the victim described as “politically motivated,” occurred just after 7 p.m. on October 23.

The victim, Nathaniel Ellis, a CU Boulder student, was riding his bike when Rose allegedly called him a “fascist” before striking him with the hockey stick.

Rose was arrested on Thursday and charged with second-degree assault, a felony.

Deputy District Attorney McKenna Mayfield explicitly noted the incident was a “politically motivated unprovoked attack.”

Police spoke to a second person of interest, a rollerblader seen with Rose shortly before the assault, who was observed posting flyers near the scene. He is not currently a suspect and is cooperating with detectives.

In a press release about the case, the City of Boulder briefly summed up the incident and charges, but added, “To protect the integrity of this active investigation and future prosecution, the Boulder Police Department is unable to release more specifics at this time.”

According to independent reporting from AntifaWatch, the attack followed the doxxing of Ellis by local Antifa groups who were demanding that he was a “Nazi.”

Rose has allegedly been associated with Denver Communists, where he appeared to introduce himself as an anarchist from Arvada in chat logs discussing protests.

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