The Trump administration accused UC Berkeley of failing to disclose millions of dollars of foreign funds on Friday, and promoted a muscular new enforcement of obscure federal rules amid ongoing efforts to steal America’s top research institutions.
The University of California flagship is the second top school under investigation this month for alleged violations of Section 117 of the 1965 Higher Education Act.
A similar investigation into Harvard was released last week. On Wednesday, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Education to tighten enforcement of rules.
The department will “start by thoroughly investigating the obvious failure of UC Berkeley, which has clearly failed to fully and accurately disclose large amounts of funds received from foreign sources,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.
Dunmoglov, deputy prime minister of UC Berkeley News Agency and Public Affairs, issued a statement that the school has already been in touch with federal authorities on the issue.
“For the past two years, Berkeley, California has been helping out federal inquiries. [Section] 117 reporting issues, and we will continue to do so,” Moglov said.
The audit is the latest in a barrage of administrative action against elite universities across the country.
The campaign season blueprint, known as Project 2025, which laid out Trump’s potential agenda, was highlighted as a mechanism that could support federal funding from top schools, such as the Pergrant and the Fulbright Scholarship.
“We’ve seen a lot of experience in education policy at Penn State,” said Kevin Kinser, professor of education policy at Penn State. “World-class universities need to be engaged all over the world, and that’s what defines world-class.”
The University of California system was already upset by massive cuts in federal funding, student visa cancellations, and hospitalizations and anti-Semitism allegations from the Department of Justice probe. Harvard, the world’s wealthiest school, emerged as an unlikely folk hero after rejecting the administration’s demands for widespread control of the school.
The wave of challenges in Section 117 could further isolate the already attacking agencies.
Elite American universities have already been deeply entangled at top schools overseas, from their engineering partnerships with the Indian Institute of Technology to Texas A&M and the Persian Gulf campus in Georgetown, NYU.
Advocates say such partnerships are crucial to innovation and academic excellence. Critics argue that foreign cash will buy influence over American students and that wedges will open a back door to American intellectual property for foreign governments.
“To protect the interests of America’s education, culture, and national security, we need transparency regarding foreign funding flowing to American higher education and research institutions,” reads the executive order on Wednesday.
The new UC Berkeley investigation will revive the 2023 House Subcommittee investigation of the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, a partnership between UC Berkeley’s engineering department and the University of Tinga in China, launched in 2016.
For decades, the two schools have collaborated extensively on research, including clean energy and climate change. Tsinghua has similar formal partnerships with the University of Washington Indiana University and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
According to the tax form of an American nonprofit, Tsinghua gave UC Regent $2.5 million in 2019 and 2018 to fund the program. In 2017, he gave Regent $4.5 million.
Times staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.
Source link
