(Daily Signal)—Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers is fighting for Americans to have the right to know which foreign adversaries are funding universities.
On Oct. 1, the Trump administration was poised to enforce Section 117 of the Higher Education Act and release foreign entity counterparty data, but the Association of American Universities, a higher education industry group representing 72 schools, sued the Departments of Education and the State Department to block the effort.
“This is a dispute between this Association of American Universities, which represents some of the Ivy League and other prestigious colleges,” she told the Daily Signal in an exclusive interview, “and the federal government, on what the American people are allowed to know.”
Rogers said a strength of the American university system is the open scientific research environment.
“The federal government funds and supports a lot of cutting-edge scientific research, whether it’s in defense, dual-use technology, healthcare technology, etc.,” she said. “But that strength can also be exploited.”
In 2026 alone, Section 117 disclosure reports from colleges have included a contract for over $1 billion from the Qatari government, dozens of collaborations with government-affiliated Chinese universities reported years late, and millions of dollars’ worth of gifts and contracts with entities on U.S. government sanction lists, including the Department of War’s 1286 List, according to the State Department.
The State Department is tracking what conditions and considerations the foreign entities attach to the donation.
“For example, if you have a foreign entity sponsoring, let’s say, a quantum computing research program, and the underlying condition, which is not publicized, is that half the seats in that program have to go to fellows from have to go to Chinese students, that would be unfair to American students, and it would be a potential vector for IP theft,” he said.
Foreign involvement on research programs with dual military use are of particular concern.
“We’ve seen efforts to steal that kind of IP in the past,” she said. “Things relating to quantum computing, superintelligence, or telecommunications. So Huawei and a lot of Huawei-related entities have been on these entity concern lists for a while, and we see them donating to American universities.”
The Harbin Engineering University, a Chinese research university, was involved in the documented theft of some underwater drone technology from a Florida university a few years ago. Other universities still maintained research partnerships with them.
Northwestern Polytechnical University, a Chinese military research institute that works closely with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, has been on the entity of concern list since 2001. It’s one of the top foreign donors to American universities.
“The point of this initiative is not to be antagonistic towards any foreign country in particular,” Rogers said. “It’s to make sure that the American universities getting American taxpayer dollars to conduct sensitive American scientific research are keeping track of where that science is going and what kind of foreign influence they’re allowing to proliferate on their campuses.”
The State Department offered to redact individual donors’ names while disclosing foreign institutional donors, but the universities still sued.
“There are various arguments relating to donor privacy, essentially that we just don’t think control under U.S. law, and there’s also arguments that are styled in various ways under administrative law, but come down to the Biden administration didn’t enforce this, so why are you asking us to do it now?” Rogers said.
There are various penalties for universities that don’t comply with Higher Education Act’s requirement to disclose foreign funding sources, but the federal government has additional tools in its belt.
“There are remedies that exist under a higher education act, but then another remedy is the ability of other federal agencies to no longer trust these universities with their money,” she said. “And if you’re a university or any other kind of institution and you’re applying for a federal grant, and you mislead the federal government about the rigor of your procedures, then there are potential fraud or remedies.”
