Please join us for an unveiling of the Department of Education’s report regarding enforcement of Section 117.  Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Under Secretary of State Keith Krach will give the opening and closing keynotes.   

Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires American colleges and universities to publicly disclose, each year, foreign gifts and contracts valuing $250,000 or more.  Lack of transparency around foreign funding has dangerous consequences for academic integrity, national security, and human rights.

The Department of Education’s Chief Investigative Counsel Paul Moore and Senior Counsel for Information and Technology Bucky Methfessel will discuss the report and its findings, along with Dr. Charles Small, Executive Director of ISGAP, who has done extensive research on the link between foreign funding and rising Antisemitism, and has presented at the Department of Justice on this topic in the past.  

U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Andrew Lelling, who chairs the Attorney General’s subcommittee on Cybercrime and Intellectual Property and is on the steering committee for the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, will discuss his efforts at the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the vulnerabilities of American universities to nefarious foreign influences.

Additional featured speakers include Vera Zhou, a U.S. permanent resident and a student at the University of Washington, who spent nearly a year in reeducation camp in the People’s Republic of China.  During this time, the University of Washington had a pending agreement to receive millions of dollars from the People’s Republic of China. Fearing to offend their Chinese counterparts, the administrators ignored Vera’s pleas for help in order to prioritize funding negotiations.

No Strings Attached?

Tracing Foreign Funding in U.S. Higher Education

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

3:00 PM

U.S. Department of Education

Live Streamed Event

(Confirmation email contains link to webinar)