Cost-cutting is now the rage of Trump 2.0 and the dread of bureaucrats inside the Beltway. While rooting out malign foreign influence in higher education is one of the quieter battles taking place within the broader effort to tackle the national debt, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) offers an elegant and principled solution: taxpayers should not have to compete with totalitarians in university funding.
Far too often, American universities see themselves as cosmopolitan city-states positioned beyond the reach of constitutional law or American cultural norms. Unlike in a typical American workplace, anti-Semitism is tolerated on college campuses. In higher education, discrimination against competent Asian and White students is not considered racist, but is rather seen as a virtuous pursuit of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Topping it off, universities offer pricey degrees to students with little guarantee of job prospects and a crushing debt burden. For all of its talk of resisting Trumpian authoritarianism, America’s universities and colleges have eagerly accepted funds from countries like China, Russia, and Qatar while agitating for “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” against Israel.
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American higher education offers U.S. adversaries a low-cost means of shaping public perception, steering popular sentiment, and accessing sensitive emerging technologies under the guise of “fundamental research.” In a report published last September, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party discovered that American academics were partnering with Chinese counterparts in sensitive areas of research funded by both the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Intelligence Community. The level of collaboration is staggering, as Congress noted over 8,800 publications coauthored between American and Chinese researchers on sensitive topics, and over 2,000 papers that published research funded by the DOD that were coauthored by Chinese researchers tied to Beijing’s defense industry. Last year, Georgia Tech University canceled its ties with China’s Tianjin University and the Shenzhen Municipal Government after it was discovered the partnership violated U.S. sanctions and that Georgia Tech was collaborating with China on semiconductor development related to hypersonic missile technology. China’s efforts in swaying higher education extend well beyond the sciences, as Beijing has used innocuous-sounding programs like Confucius Institutes to shape perception and direct soft-power influence abroad.
China and other authoritarians co-opt American universities through foreign funding that is not only pervasive but often goes unreported. Currently, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act mandates that universities report foreign funds to the government if they amount to more than $250,000. Congressional investigations have discovered that nearly 70% of universities not only fail to comply with Section 117, but that even universities that do comply under-report the amount of foreign gifts they receive. According to a database of foreign funds compiled by the National Association of Scholars, the top 20 donations in dollar amounts all come from China. Kean University alone reported a five-year Chinese contract worth $353,708,530. UCLA reported one Chinese contract spanning from 2018 to 2038 valued at $60,000,000. In both cases, the donors were listed as “unknown.” UC Berkeley alone failed to disclose $240 million from China in the form of contractual partnerships, investments, and gifts.
In a piece of legislation called the “Deterrent Act,” Congress is looking to lower the reporting threshold for such gifts to $0 for countries like China and Russia; however, this lower threshold does nothing to protect sovereignty in education or ensure that universities will comply. After all, universities do not comply as it is. What is needed is a watchdog that not only barks, but bites. With an aggressive Congress, Trump’s DOGE can solve academia’s vulnerabilities once and for all by taxing foreign funds at a rate of 100%, and by taxing endowment proceeds derived from Chinese funds. Universities are unique in that they have incentives to pursue money and prestige just as any normal business enterprise. Money from Beijing and Chinese firms offers colleges plenty of cash, while trips and research collaboration allow even remote U.S. colleges aspects of international prestige and openness where it would otherwise be lacking. […]
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