President Donald Trump has vowed to “end the secrecy” surrounding foreign funding and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence at U.S. colleges and universities after the Biden administration “turned a blind eye” to the problem.
Trump said in a late April executive order that “it is the policy of my Administration to end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions, protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.”
The president ordered Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Attorney General Pam Bondi to enforce the federal laws surrounding the disclosure of foreign funding on U.S. campuses after Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona deprioritized the issue over the previous four years.
“During my first term, the Department of Education opened investigations on nineteen campuses from 2019-2021, which led universities to report $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign funds,” Trump said in the April executive order. “Yet the prior administration undid this work, moving the Department of Education’s specialized investigatory work on foreign funds to a unit ill-equipped to perform it, undermining investigations, and hindering public access to information on foreign gifts and contracts.”
