Rogue nations infiltrate our colleges and universities

In our colleges and universities today, Jewish students are terrified as they are harassed and sometimes threatened with bodily harm by their fellow students. A Cornell University professor called the murder and rape of men, women and babies “exhilarating” and “energizing.”

Universities, recipients of your tax dollars, are meant to be places of safe learning where debate and free thought are welcome. Instead, we watch videos of Jewish students barricading themselves in buildings as their peers bang on the door.

How did it come to this?

For years, our institutions of higher education have been the targets of our adversaries who are bent on influencing our children. Enemies such as China and state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran and Qatar, poured billions of dollars into U.S. universities, and they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and they certainly expect something in return in the way of influence and access.

Last week, the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania admitted publicly to the House Education and the Workforce Committee that they have no idea where these foreign donations are coming from. They also denied that our adversaries have any influence on their students, discounting the shocking rise of blatant, proud antisemitism.

Unfortunately, they could not be more wrong. The Network Contagion Research Institute found that over 200 U.S. colleges and universities received $13 billion in previously undisclosed contributions from foreign regimes that have helped fuel antisemitism on college campuses. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

Our enemies are at work to expand their influence in universities across the country. Earlier this year, the University of California, Berkeley was exposed for hiding a $240 million partnership with China.  The threat of foreign influence in education should not be dismissed. This is a serious danger to our students that has been allowed to fester for too long. Bad actors like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Iran, who do not share our values, attach strings to every donation, allowing them to steal sensitive research, harass foreign exchange students, and censor speech that criticizes atrocities like the CCP’s genocide against Uyghurs.

While current law requires these universities to report foreign gifts and contracts, very few institutions follow the law. A report by the Senate found that 70 percent of colleges fail to report gifts from the CCP.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s Department of Education has refused to announce a single  investigation into any of these universities. This unwillingness to enforce the law has emboldened universities to ignore reporting requirements.

That is why we introduced the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions (DETERRENT) Act, which passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support.

Our bill slashes the foreign gift reporting requirements from $250,000 down to $50,000. For countries of concern, like the CCP, Iran, Russia, and North Korea, it cuts the requirement to $0. It also closes reporting loopholes and penalizes universities for noncompliance.

For too long, those who hate democracy have been able to undermine our nation by attacking American academia. We are proud to see this commonsense reform pass the House of Representatives today in a bipartisan manner and we look forward to Senate passage.

The support on college campuses for Hamas’ evil attacks on Israeli civilians should be a wakeup call for every American. There is no time to waste. We must put a stop to any and all malign foreign influence in our colleges and universities so our adversaries don’t destroy our democracy.