Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon says the U.S. Justice Department is preparing to investigate Stanford over the funding it gets from China and other foreign countries, and the university’s foreign student policies.
Stanford receives the fourth-highest level of funding from foreign sources in “countries of concern” among U.S. universities, according to data from the Department of Education. “Countries of concern” include China, North Korea, Russia and Cuba.
The Trump administration has been hammering elite universities, including Harvard and Columbia, over allegations of anti-Semitism and discriminatory admissions practices.
The administration suffered a setback on Thursday when a federal judge in Boston threw out the government’s suit against Harvard, which claimed the prestigious university of failing to address campus antisemitism.
Dhillon, in an interview with Bloomberg News, said that Stanford hasn’t received the same level of scrutiny as its peers. But she said Stanford is not getting passed over “because of their virtue … It’s because I am staffing up.”
Dhillon said she was concerned about foreign funding for professors’ work and for laboratories that deal with potentially sensitive information from a national security perspective.
Stanford’s response
Stanford said it conducts rigorous due diligence on all philanthropic gifts and sponsored research, applying enhanced scrutiny to foreign sources, particularly those from countries of concern.
The university said it maintains the right to decline any gift if the source of the funds raises ethical or legal concerns.
In March, the Justice Department opened an inquiry into whether race was a factor in admissions at the Stanford School of Medicine.
Be the first to comment