What kind of influence are foreign nations exercising on US colleges and universities? From Joe Guzzardi at ustechworkers.com:
The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has opened an ongoing investigation into an aggregate $6.5 billion in unreported cash gifts donated by foreign nations to America’s leading universities. China, Iran, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are, according to The Wall Street Journal, among the most prominent foreign countries that made gifts that exceeded $250,000 annually, the total which requires reporting to federal authorities.
DOE documents reveal that, in some cases, the universities actively solicited foreign funding from nations potentially looking to steal research or “spread propaganda benefiting foreign governments.” The foreign donors, the DOE’s probe discovered, showed that “opaque foundations, foreign campuses, and other sophisticated legal structures to generate revenue” have been used to disguise actual funding sources.
Harvard and Yale universities are the DOE’s principal targets. In January, federal authorities charged Harvard’s chemistry department chair, Charles Lieber, with lying about the university’s Chinese grants. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Lieber had established, apparently without Harvard’s knowledge, a research lab in China’s central city of Wuhan.
