Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University are among 30 American institutions ordered to audit their foreign research relationships, according to US officials, as higher education representatives accused the Pentagon of implying wrongdoing without publicly presenting evidence.
The identities emerged after the Department of Defence announced the audits on Monday but declined to name the universities or disclose the foreign partnerships under scrutiny.
An American official, speaking anonymously to the Associated Press, confirmed that Harvard, MIT and Johns Hopkins had received notifications.
Fox News, citing a US official, subsequently published what it described as the complete list of institutions.
It included several of the country’s most prominent research universities, including Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, New York University, and the University of California campuses in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
The Pentagon had not responded to repeated email and telephone requests from the South China Morning Post seeking the names of the universities, the collaborations that prompted the audits and evidence of any unauthorised technology transfer or misconduct.
The universities have until August 31 to conduct comprehensive reviews of their academic, financial and research relationships with foreign “entities of concern”, assess whether sensitive or export-controlled research was exposed, and adopt mitigation measures that could include terminating partnerships.
Institutions that fail to comply could lose eligibility for future federal research funding.
Pentagon announcement suggests wrongdoing, but no evidence of it
Sarah Spreitzer, vice-president of the American Council on Education, said the Pentagon’s announcement suggested – without providing evidence – that the universities had engaged in wrongdoing.
“We don’t appreciate the implication that we are not good partners on research security, given that we helped create this list, and given that we’ve always partnered with the federal government when there has been national security concerns,” she told the Associated Press.
The council represents US university and college presidents and helped develop the first version of the Pentagon’s list of foreign institutions considered potential research-security risks during US President Donald Trump’s first administration.
Spreitzer said most council members subsequently moved away from partnerships with institutions on the list. She said universities could now be held responsible for collaborations that predated the restrictions.
The Pentagon said the audits involved ties to foreign institutions identified under Section 1286 of the 2019 National Defence Authorisation Act, as well as organisations associated with what it called “rebranded Confucius Institutes”.
An updated Section 1286 list issued last month identified 130 academic and research institutions in China, Russia and Iran. Eighty-eight were in mainland China.
The Pentagon has accused the listed institutions of engaging in activities that increase the risk of misappropriating US government-funded research.
The department has not said whether it selected the 30 universities because officials found evidence of technology transfers or other violations, or simply because they maintained relationships with institutions on the list.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said Beijing opposed “the overstretching of the concept of national security and the politicisation or instrumentalisation of normal scientific, educational and academic exchanges”.
“Scientific innovation and academic development require open cooperation; restricting normal research exchanges will ultimately harm the interests of all parties, including US researchers and institutions,” the spokesperson said.
“The US side should abandon the Cold War mentality and foster an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for educational, scientific and people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States.”
John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on China, endorsed the audits on Tuesday and said universities that ignored research-security concerns should face consequences.
“Research partnerships and collaboration with Chinese entities linked to the CCP and the PLA present undeniable national security risks,” he said, referring to the Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army.
“Secretary [of defence] Hegseth is taking an important step to protect taxpayer-funded research from exploitation by the Chinese Communist Party and other foreign adversaries.”
Moolenaar’s committee said many of the 30 universities had previously appeared in its research-security investigations.
Those inquiries had raised concerns about US universities’ relationships with Chinese military-linked institutions, participation in programmes supported by the China Scholarship Council and collaboration on federally funded research with Chinese researchers.
The committee did not identify which of its previous investigations involved universities now subject to Pentagon audits or say how many institutions it meant by “many”.
US report accuses Harvard of collaborating with China’s military sector
Last week, Moolenaar’s committee and the House Education and Workforce Committee released a report accusing Harvard of inadequate oversight of collaborations with institutions associated with China’s military and defence-industrial sector.
The Republican-led investigation alleged that Harvard-affiliated researchers had co-authored more than 140 papers with researchers linked to Chinese military institutions.
Harvard has not been accused of violating the law, and the congressional report’s findings represent the committees’ assessment of the university’s relationships.
Harvard has not responded to SCMP’s request for comments.
According to the list attributed to the US official, the other institutions include Georgetown University; the University of Texas at Austin; Emory University; Oklahoma State University; Penn State University; the universities of Cincinnati, Minnesota, North Carolina at Chapel Hill and South Carolina; the University of Southern California; Virginia Tech; Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Bryant University; Drake University; Illinois Institute of Technology; Northeastern State University in Oklahoma; Portland State University; Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Stony Brook University; the University of Delaware; and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The University of California campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego were named separately.
The department has not publicly explained why it withheld the identities while giving the institutions only two weeks to complete the audits. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
