The Trump administration widened its investigation of large foreign donations at high-profile American universities on Tuesday, accusing the University of Michigan of improperly labeling some donations and disclosing millions in foreign funding “in an untimely manner.”
The Department of Education has opened similar investigations at
Harvard University
, the
University of Pennsylvania
and the
University of California, Berkeley.
The move comes as the administration carries out a pressure campaign to
shift the ideological tilt of American higher education
and
discourage the enrollment of foreign students
at universities. Amid that pressure campaign, the University of Michigan
shut down its flagship diversity program
in March.
Officials did not say what funds received by the university violated disclosure statutes, or which countries the funding had come from.
A letter sent to the University of Michigan on Tuesday said that disclosures for approximately $86 million in foreign funding “were submitted in an untimely manner.” Paul Moore, chief investigative counsel at the Department of Education,
said in a news release
that the university had erroneously identified some foreign funding as originating from “nongovernmental entities,” even though the foreign funders seemed to be “directly affiliated with foreign governments.”
The department also submitted an expansive list of records requests as part of the investigation, asking the university to provide personnel files on university students and employees, records on research projects, tax records and records on other partnerships with foreign universities, governments and other entities.
In the news release, Mr. Moore also sought to tie the investigation into the University of Michigan’s funding to two smuggling cases involving Chinese researchers working at laboratories at the university. The Department of Justice charged the three students in June, two with smuggling an agricultural fungus and one with smuggling “biological material related to roundworms.”