Biden to ax Trump investigations of secret foreign money in higher ed, college groups say

 The Biden administration plans to shutter its predecessor's investigations into undisclosed foreign funding of U.S. colleges and universities

• Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires institutions of higher education to file disclosure reports twice yearly that document their gifts from, or contracts with, foreign sources that are valued at $250,000 or more individually or cumulatively within a calendar year.

The Trump administration’s Department of Education launched a crackdown in 2019 with investigations into Georgetown and Texas A&M for undisclosed foreign funding from China, Russia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia

• Only four out of 19 have been closed, against the University of Texas (Nov. 25, 2020), Georgetown University and University of Alabama (Jan. 15, 2021), with the latter also the most recently opened investigation: Dec. 22, 2020.
• The department has yet to open a Section 117 investigation of its own.

What some institutions actually did following the Trump crackdown was obfuscate their financial dealings

• Set up technically distinct university foundations to "essentially launder money from foreign donors and governments"
• The Biden administration's refusal to open even a single new investigation shows its symbiotic relationship with the "very large special interest organizations" that "do a lot in the way of groundwork to support the Administration's policy and cultural priorities to the detriment of society"

https://justthenews.com/government/security/biden-ax-trump-investigations-secret-foreign-money-higher-ed-college-groups-say