A frantic declaration that “there is nothing to see here” is often an attempt to divert our attention from precisely where we should look. This week, the Association of American Universities (AAU) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to stop the Trump administration from advancing transparency on foreign funding of American colleges and universities. A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the government that blocks the release of data on “foreign spending sources in higher education.” What does the AAU fear might come to light? As the National Association of Scholars (NAS) has documented for years, quite a bit.
The AAU, which represents 69 universities and all Ivy League schools, objects to this basic transparency, arguing that the data on foreign funds would cause “harassment” and “reputational harm.” These objections persist despite the ED’s assurance that “natural persons” would not be disclosed. If actual individuals are not named, one can infer that the AAU fears the American public might discover, with more daylight, that its higher education system is beholden to foreign adversaries that hate them.
The NAS has documented the extent to which America’s adversaries target colleges and universities. In 2017, we uncovered China’s network of Confucius Institutes across more than 100 universities across the country. Far from the innocuous language programs the universities said they were, China used these institutes to align American education with Beijing’s Communist narrative, Chinese law, and to gain proximity to valuable technology. The daylight we provided pressured almost all these programs to end operations.
We were skeptical about how “closed” the Confucius Institutes really were. Like DEI programs, supposedly shuttered after Trump’s executive orders but often renamed or reshuffled, Confucius Institutes found new life in the shadows.
In 2022, we documented how Confucius Institutes did not close so much as rebrand to spare their university hosts the embarrassment of hosting them. In 2024, we showed how China has used its ties to exploit American universities, non-profit law, and even American federalism to reach into at least 164 different K-12 systems across the US. NAS exposed how schools like Portland State University, Alfred University, and Georgia Tech threaten America’s technological edge through Chinese research collaboration and wanton indiscretion. NAS documented and demonstrated how Alfred University’s ceramic sciences program, which works on technology for hypersonic missiles, is still vulnerable to hostile nations like Iran, Russia, and China.
Ties with China are not the only thing that AAU might be worried about coming to light, as higher education has been rocked by waves of reports linking college campuses to enemies abroad. Iran gave millions to American colleges without the money technically coming from abroad. The Alavi Foundation, which was linked to the Iranian regime and sanctioned Iranian banks, gave millions to American universities. Until 2022, MIT had a close relationship with Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation, which aimed to bolster “Kendall Square,” or Moscow’s own version of Silicon Valley. The NAS has extensively documented how Qatar funneled cash into American academia to suit its own purposes. With “affordability” as the political buzzword of 2026, the NAS also documented how the State of California has formed a regulatory alliance with China through the University of California system, to the detriment of American consumers and energy independence. In 2023, Network Contagion Research Institute reported how higher ed received $13 billion in foreign funds that were not only undisclosed by universities, but which helped foment skyrocketing antisemitism on college campuses.
What makes AAU’s objection to foreign fund transparency heinous is its sense of entitlement to privacy despite the US tax dollars these universities receive. Added to this is how tepid these universities have been in their “117 reporting,” the federal law that requires them to disclose foreign funding. According to the Department of Education’s current foreign funding tracker, only source countries and dollar amounts are visible. And yet even that is telling. Harvard’s top source of foreign funding is China, followed by Switzerland, which gave the school over $645 million. The offshore tax haven of Guernsey is Yale’s top donor country, which gave $446 million to the campus, followed by China. Qatar gave a quaint $3 billion to Cornell University, while the Gulf kingdom gave another $1 billion to Georgetown. Iran International, a human rights watchdog, has noted the critical role that Qatar plays in providing Tehran a financial lifeline to the outside world.
The takeaway from AAU’s objection to foreign funds transparency? Higher education has become geopolitical with little regard for the interests of American citizens and national security. Surely, there is nothing to see here.
And just as surely is the question of whether AAU is itself a beneficiary of funding from one or more of our nation’s adversaries. If it is pursuing this lawsuit out of its own financial interest, that’s bad. If it is doing China’s bidding for free, that may be even worse.
