Alana Goodman writes for the Washington Free Beacon about a disturbing development in American higher education during the Biden years.
American universities raked in nearly a billion dollars in the past four years from mystery donors in offshore tax havens, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. While the universities listed the unnamed donations as coming from places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, the Free Beacon traced millions of dollars back to donors linked to China.
The news comes as the Trump administration prepares to crack down on foreign influence on college campuses, following years of Biden administration policies that have shielded the names of foreign university donors from the public.
Since 2021, U.S. universities reported receiving over $600 million from donors in Bermuda, $280 million from Guernsey, $25 million from the British Virgin Islands, $25 million from the Bahamas, $17.5 million from Cayman Islands, and $11 million from the island of Jersey, Department of Education records show. While universities are required to disclose those foreign donors to the federal government under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, the Biden administration broke precedent with prior administrations by withholding the names of foreign donors to the public.
As a result, for the past four years, the Department of Education only released the names of the countries where each donation came from. Tax haven countries represented some of the largest sources of funding during that time, raising questions about transparency and where the actual money is coming from.
In some cases, records reviewed by the Free Beacon show, it’s coming from China.
The University of Pennsylvania, for example, reported in June 2022 that it received $3 million from a donor in the Cayman Islands to support the “Penn Wharton China center including research articles and case studies,” according to federal records. But state records from Pennsylvania—where schools are required to report the names of foreign donors—list the donor as E-House Enterprise Holdings, a Chinese real estate company with a listed address in Hong Kong. The company is led by Xin Zhou, a Chinese national who serves on Penn’s Wharton Board of Advisors.
