American universities are supposed to be the exemplar of what makes this country great. And yet malign foreign influence has been eroding the integrity of American higher education for years. Rather than turning out scholars and patriots, universities have become bastions of anti-American sentiment, woke academia, and treasure troves of sensitive information for nations that want to steal American intellectual property and undermine our safety. Currently, there is very little accountability for the foreign money flowing to these colleges. Some Members of Congress would like to fix that.
Earlier this month, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee held a hearing titled “Transparency and Trust: Exposing Malign Foreign Interest in Higher Education.” At a time when America is in a conflict with a hostile nation and when terror attacks from homegrown Islamists are on the rise, there is a prescient need to guarantee national security. One way to do that is to ensure colleges are neither churning out students who hate the country where they live, nor are they handing over sensitive information to our enemies.
A current problem is that only a portion of foreign gifts are reported to the federal government. Under section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), only gifts or contracts valued at or above $250,000 currently have to be reported. As a result, the Department of Education estimates that nearly a third of foreign gifts go unreported. One of the witnesses, Dr. Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars, pointed out that foreign entities can avoid disclosure by wiring payments in smaller increments or routing funds through multiple transactions. By lowering that threshold to $50,000, more foreign gifts would be reported. Sen. Cassidy’s DETERRENT Act would do just that, if passed.
Another issue is that while the gift amount and country of origin must be tracked, what the money is then used for does not have to be reported. In 2025, nearly $5.2 billion in foreign gifts to universities was reported, yet there is little way to know how most of those dollars were used. There is currently no way of knowing if a Chinese-funded entity, for example, is merely involved in language study or is invested in sensitive military research. According to Dr. Wood, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the latter is often the case. He told the committee that “Georgia Tech and Alfred University had concerning ties to Chinese entities while working on hypersonic missile technology research, and the University of Michigan has faced scrutiny over biological materials and access by Chinese nationals.” Yet the Department of Education’s foreign gifts tracker cannot show whether funding supported sensitive activities such as these or something entirely benign. As committee chair Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) pointed out, “If someone is building a medical facility in the Middle East, that’s a good thing … but we need to know if other countries are trying to steal our research or influence our students.” Or in the more pointed words of Sen. Ashely Moody, (R-Florida), “We could be helping China to develop their nuclear program … We are promoting our own demise if we don’t get smart to this.”
A particular problem on campuses has been Chinese influence and theft, a topic that came up repeatedly in the hearing. For years, the Chinese funded “Confucius Institutes” at many top universities. These entities were joint ventures between colleges and the Hanban, China’s education ministry. While billed as learning centers that helped students participate in Chinese language studies and cultural immersion, they were little more than a propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinese officials openly acknowledged that these were “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda apparatus,” shaping perceptions of the CCP and whitewashing China’s many human rights abuses in college classrooms.
At their height, nearly 100 colleges had a Confucious Institute. After a series of investigations and public backlash, the number of Confucious Institutes, by name, has dwindled to just 10. But it would be naïve to think that China has completely abandoned the infrastructure, financial partnerships, and influence over college curriculum it has developed on campuses over the years. The Commission on the Theft of Intellectual Property found that the CCP, due in part to its infiltration of higher education, steals the equivalent of $200 to $600 billion worth of intellectual property each year.
The success of the Confucious Institutes emphasizes the ease with which foreign nations can become an integral part of the American higher education system. While China has a now well-documented track record of using the university system to their own ends, there are justifiable concerns about the influence of other nations, such as Qatar.
In 2025, Qatar provided $1.1 billion in funding to American universities, making it the single largest foreign donor to U.S. higher education last year. Between 2001 and 2021, it gave $4.7 billion. Much of that has been connected to Qatar’s push for American schools to open branches in the nation of Qatar itself. Dr. Wood noted that these agreements extend far beyond the establishment of overseas campuses, however. The Qatar Foundation, the state-backed organization that facilitates these agreements, often has a say in what kind of curriculum is taught on the American campuses of their partner schools. Like China glossing over its more egregious activities via the Confucious Institutes, Qatar can ensure American students get a version of Middle East history that their government approves of by way of the millions of dollars it is funneling to U.S. colleges.
As antisemitic protests have become a rampant problem on college campuses since October 7th, there are questions regarding just how much funding from nations like Qatar has contributed to that particular problem. If the increasing number of college students who readily chant “Death to America” is due in part to the influence of other nations, that is a problem that must be addressed. There is difference between colleges being a space for open dialogue and a platform for radically anti-American rhetoric.
Even though we can track the country of direct origin, there are many instances when that is not the true source of the funds. For example, the Isle of Guernsey gave $440 million to Yale University last year. As Dr. Wood noted, no one thinks Guernsey is an adversary of the U.S. But it is odd that an island with a population of just 64,000 people can afford such a gift to one of America’s elite universities. But because there is no way to track the use of those funds, people are justifiably suspicious about the true origins of that gift. Did some other country funnel those dollars through Guernsey? Why launder money through another nation if those funds are for benign purposes? We can only speculate.
It is not that universities that accept gifts from bad actors need to be punished. Rather, increased transparency would both protect them and the United States as a whole. Currently, universities are unfairly expected to navigate agreements with countries of concern without federal guidance. Universities are supposed to be bastions of open dialogue and debate; they are not necessarily experts on national security concerns. Disclosing who is giving money to the universities and for what purposes would protect these schools from being taken advantage of by foreign adversaries. When it comes to foreign nations influencing American college students, trust is built on transparency. And we could use a lot more of it.
