Foreign donations to American universities surged during the Biden administration, with Qatar, the largest source of such funding in the past 40 years, and China, the second-largest, significantly ramping up their donations.
According to a new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute shared exclusively with The Free Press, the amount of foreign funding for American universities during the Biden administration — $29 million — equaled the total over the last forty years.
“The floodgates opened during the Biden era,” NCRI’s co-founder Joel Finkelstein told The Free Press. “This isn’t just a financial issue—it’s a national security crisis. Hostile powers are buying influence on American campuses at an industrial scale.”
Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that required institutions of higher education to “report significant sources of foreign funding,” while noting, “But, because section 117 has not been robustly enforced, the true amounts, sources, and purposes of foreign money flowing to American campuses are unknown. From 2010 to 2016, according to one study, universities failed to disclose more than half of reportable foreign gifts. Even when foreign funding is reported, its true sources are often hidden.”
Trump pointed out that during his first term, “the Department of Education opened investigations on 19 campuses from 2019-2021, which led universities to report $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign funds. 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.”
The order authorized the Secretary of Education to “take appropriate steps to require universities to more specifically disclose details about foreign funding, including the true source and purpose of the funds,” while adding that the “Secretary and the Attorney General shall hold accountable higher education institutions that fail to comply with the law concerning disclosure of foreign funding.”
“A 2024 study published by the National Association of Scholars found that universities failed to disclose at least $1 billion in foreign funding since Biden took office, the majority of which came from authoritarian countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey,” The Free Press reported, adding, “While Qatar holds the designation of a major non-NATO ally of the United States, the country is also known for harboring the leaders of Hamas and exporting political Islamism, including by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, across the Middle East.”
The NCRI analysis examined donations disclosed to the federal government, as required by law for donations of more than $250,000. This means that a significant amount of undisclosed funds may also be being donated. The Free Press previously reported that 200 or more American colleges and universities illegally withheld information regarding an estimated $13 billion in undisclosed contributions from foreign countries.
“An official on Trump’s antisemitism task force told The Free Press that they are actively investigating ‘alleged connections between foreign malign actors and student groups on campus.’” The Free Press revealed. “The official said the task force was scrutinizing connections between both student groups and faculty who have ties to universities such as Birzeit in the West Bank, which Israeli officials have previously accused of having ties to Hamas.”
Last year, an NCRI study in Frontiers of Social Psychology found “providing massive financial support to campuses with ascendant illiberalism serves the interests of foreign actors hostile to the U.S. in particular or liberal democracy in general.”
“It is notable that the universities exploding with anti-Israel protests have the strongest relationships with governments whose national interests are at direct odds with the United States,” The Free Press concluded.
[#item_full_content]
[[{“value”:”
Foreign donations to American universities surged during the Biden administration, with Qatar, the largest source of such funding in the past 40 years, and China, the second-largest, significantly ramping up their donations.
According to a new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute shared exclusively with The Free Press, the amount of foreign funding for American universities during the Biden administration — $29 million — equaled the total over the last forty years.
“The floodgates opened during the Biden era,” NCRI’s co-founder Joel Finkelstein told The Free Press. “This isn’t just a financial issue—it’s a national security crisis. Hostile powers are buying influence on American campuses at an industrial scale.”
Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that required institutions of higher education to “report significant sources of foreign funding,” while noting, “But, because section 117 has not been robustly enforced, the true amounts, sources, and purposes of foreign money flowing to American campuses are unknown. From 2010 to 2016, according to one study, universities failed to disclose more than half of reportable foreign gifts. Even when foreign funding is reported, its true sources are often hidden.”
Trump pointed out that during his first term, “the Department of Education opened investigations on 19 campuses from 2019-2021, which led universities to report $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign funds. 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.”
The order authorized the Secretary of Education to “take appropriate steps to require universities to more specifically disclose details about foreign funding, including the true source and purpose of the funds,” while adding that the “Secretary and the Attorney General shall hold accountable higher education institutions that fail to comply with the law concerning disclosure of foreign funding.”
“A 2024 study published by the National Association of Scholars found that universities failed to disclose at least $1 billion in foreign funding since Biden took office, the majority of which came from authoritarian countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey,” The Free Press reported, adding, “While Qatar holds the designation of a major non-NATO ally of the United States, the country is also known for harboring the leaders of Hamas and exporting political Islamism, including by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, across the Middle East.”
The NCRI analysis examined donations disclosed to the federal government, as required by law for donations of more than $250,000. This means that a significant amount of undisclosed funds may also be being donated. The Free Press previously reported that 200 or more American colleges and universities illegally withheld information regarding an estimated $13 billion in undisclosed contributions from foreign countries.
“An official on Trump’s antisemitism task force told The Free Press that they are actively investigating ‘alleged connections between foreign malign actors and student groups on campus.’” The Free Press revealed. “The official said the task force was scrutinizing connections between both student groups and faculty who have ties to universities such as Birzeit in the West Bank, which Israeli officials have previously accused of having ties to Hamas.”
Last year, an NCRI study in Frontiers of Social Psychology found “providing massive financial support to campuses with ascendant illiberalism serves the interests of foreign actors hostile to the U.S. in particular or liberal democracy in general.”
“It is notable that the universities exploding with anti-Israel protests have the strongest relationships with governments whose national interests are at direct odds with the United States,” The Free Press concluded.
“}]]
