American universities received ‘jaw-dropping’ amount of Arab donations, report claims

Report found universities disclosed less than half of their foreign donations, flagging just $1.8billion of $3.9billion in overseas funds

American universities received $767million in undisclosed Arab donations, a report has found.
‌The report carried out by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), looked at funding of US universities between 2012 and 2022, revealing Saudi Arabia and Qatar have collectively funnelled $767million into US higher education that has not been disclosed.
‌In total, the NAS report found that universities have disclosed less than half of their foreign donations, flagging just $1.8billion of a total $3.9billion received in overseas funds.
‌Under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, universities must report contracts, gifts, and grants they receive from foreign donors worth more than $250,000 in a calendar year to the US Department of Education.
‌However, universities mostly ignored these disclosure requirements for decades, the report claimed, leading the Department of Education to launch an investigation in 2020 that found higher education institutions failed to report more than $6.5 billion in foreign funds to the federal government. 
These gifts mostly came from authoritarian countries such as China and Qatar.
‌The NAS report’s authors described the findings as “jaw-dropping”, adding that “without enforcement, colleges and universities slip transparency and fiduciary responsibility and open American institutions to foreign coercion through billions of ghost dollars”.
‌The research examined more than 100 public record requests about foreign gifts to more than 70 universities, as well as data collected by the Department of Education.
‌By comparing the NAS database of overseas donations with Section 117 figures on disclosures, the report found that billions of overseas dollars had been given to US universities had not been disclosed.
‌Universities quietly received $423million in funding from Saudi Arabia, the biggest donor of any country, since 2012. Qatar, meanwhile, has donated $344million.
‌Both countries also featured among the five countries providing the most donations worth more than $250,000, alongside China, Germany and the United Kingdom.
‌The NAS report found that compliance with financial disclosure rules was relatively high during the Trump administration but was low both before and after.
‌Under the Obama administration, starting in 2010, figures show that $2.1billion in overseas funds to universities went unreported, according to the report.
With the arrival of Trump in 2016, the NAS report found that disclosure of donations drastically increased, with reporting rising to $4.7billion – up from $1.8billion under Mr Obama.
This came after Trump’s administration launched an investigation into underreporting of foreign gifts, focusing on 12 major research universities.
However, undisclosed funding spiked again at one billion dollars when Mr Biden took office – shortly after which the Department of Education shut down its investigations into the underreporting of foreign gifts.
The prevalence of US universities accepting donations from potentially hostile powers will fuel concern about foreign influence over the country’s academic institutions.
“Higher education is awash with conflicting interests,” said NAS Fellow and report author Neetu Arnold. 
“When American college students stump for foreign terrorist organisations and authoritarian governments, we must wonder where and how they receive such propaganda.
“The hundreds of millions spent by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, and Russia are a good place to begin the search. 
“Section 117 could help lead the way should the desire to strengthen American security and better American education overcome the lobbying power of higher education and foreign governments.”