President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday cracking down on foreign funding at universities, which has become a key point of contention in the administration’s
battle with Harvard
.
The order aims to reinforce and strengthen rules requiring colleges and universities to report the receipt of foreign gifts or contracts worth $250,000 or more. The Trump administration has said it believes that reporting is spotty and oversight inadequate.
The order intends to make clear the U.S. government can revoke federal funding from universities that fail to meet transparency requirements around money flowing to American campuses from outside the country.
Last week, the administration
pressed Harvard
to turn over records on the money it receives from foreign sources going back a decade. The demand was part of Trump’s escalating
pressure campaign
against the nation’s most prominent university.
In the Oval Office on Wednesday, before Trump signed the new executive order, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf said that while there are laws around disclosing foreign gifts, “we believe that certain universities, including for example Harvard, have routinely violated this law and this law has not been effectively enforced.”
The administration hasn’t provided evidence Harvard violated the law.
A Harvard spokesman said the university has filed the appropriate reports “for decades as part of its ongoing compliance with the law.” The university has previously said gifts and contracts from foreign sources include ones that provide executive education, other training and academic publications.
During Trump’s first term, the Education Department said it
uncovered $6.5 billion
in previously unreported foreign funds to U.S. colleges and universities. The executive order directs the attorney general to audit, investigate and enforce the compliance standards.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Wednesday that billions of dollars from places like China and Qatar have flowed into American higher education with little to no oversight. “This financial infiltration enabled foreign governments to steal taxpayer-funded intellectual property and reshape how our elite campuses teach about Israel and the Middle East,” she said.
American universities get billions of dollars in grants, contracts or gifts from foreign sources, which they must report semiannually to the government. Federal law requires universities to report donations from foreign sources of more than $250,000. The White House said around 300 institutions report federal gifts each year.
In 2020, the first Trump administration opened an investigation into Harvard, as part of a larger review of U.S. universities’ foreign funding. The Biden administration notified Harvard in 2024 that the investigation was closed.
Write to Douglas Belkin at
[email protected]
and Sara Randazzo at
[email protected]
