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UC Berkeley defends foreign gifts, insists research remains unrestricted, public
American universities have accepted over $380 million in donations from foreign entities on government watch-lists, according to new data released by the U.S. Department of Education.
This data, which reports foreign donations since the institution of the Higher Education Act of 1965, has sparked concerns over national security.
Under the act, any university that receives federal funding is legally required to report gifts from or contracts with foreign sources if the combined total equals $250,000 or more in one year.
Among the 697 transactions involving “Counterparties of Concern,” the Skolkovo Foundation, a Russian tech hub, donated over $51 million. The Beijing Institute of Technology gave over $44 million, and Air China donated over $33 million.
Of the 67 universities that received these donations, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology topped the list, receiving $80 million from watchlisted entities. Other schools include the University of Arizona, University of North Dakota, Texas A&M, and the University of California Berkeley, which received almost $27 million.
Over $7 million of UC Berkeley’s funding came from Sun Yat-sen University, an organization that hosts China’s National Supercomputing Center. It is part of the Department of Defense’s list of foreign entities engaging in problematic activity.
Dan Mogulof, assistant vice chancellor at UC Berkeley, told The College Fix that the school has not evaluated the relevant data to determine how the donations were used.
“What we can unequivocally state,” he said, “is that UC Berkeley complies with all of the statutes and regulations that apply to contracts and gifts from foreign sources, and to all reporting requirements.”
Mogulof further told The Fix that the school only conducts fundamental research, “where the resulting information is to be shared broadly within the scientific community.”
“In accepting extramural research support, UC Berkeley does not accept restrictions on the freedom to publish. As a public university, we are further committed to making discoveries publicly available. So, every government, every researcher, every person in the world is able to read the results of our research in freely available scientific publications,” he said.
However, an education expert raised concerns about this funding.
Defense of Freedom Institute spokesperson Angela Morabito told The Fix that “College leaders should know where every dollar is going, especially when those dollars come from hostile foreign powers.”
Morabito, a former U.S. Department of Education press secretary, added that “Academic freedom and national security cannot be afterthoughts considered only after the check clears.”
She also advocated for the DETERRENT Act to combat this problem.
The act “would strengthen reporting requirements and penalize institutions that aren’t honest about their foreign financial ties,” she said.
This recent disclosure is part of a long standing concern over transparency and security in university funding. Despite the legal requirements to disclose foreign funding, the federal government under the Biden administration neglected to enforce this statute, as previously reported by The College Fix
However, the Trump administration issued an executive order in April 2025 requiring universities to do more than report the donation amount. They must provide specific details, “including the true source and purpose of the funds.”
In a parallel effort to crack down on foreign influence in higher education, the U.S. Department of War recently demanded that 30 academic institutions across the nation immediately conduct research security audits, The Fix previously reported.
The notification directs the schools “to initiate immediate and comprehensive reviews of their academic, financial and research collaborations with foreign entities of concern,” according to a department news release.
