The Trump administration on Thursday accused the University of Pennsylvania of submitting incomplete, inaccurate financial disclosures about its foreign ties and ordered the Ivy League school to provide a raft of records.
The demand for documents included the names and contact information of university personnel who work with foreign governments, including in research collaborations and student exchange programs.
Officials suggested in a letter sent on Thursday from the Education Department to J. Larry Jameson, the president of Penn, that the college has struggled with veracity in its disclosures of foreign funding.
By law, U.S. colleges and universities are required twice a year to report foreign gifts and contracts worth $250,000 or more to the government.
In Penn’s latest filing, more than half of the disclosures were reported late, according to the department. The government also said the university had misidentified many of the foreign sources without providing additional details.
Consequently, the department said it is demanding the college produce a lengthy and detailed list of documents within 30 days. Those documents include copies of admissions agreements with foreign governments for international students, as well as records related to faculty and research collaborations from the past eight years. The government is also seeking the names and contact information for university personnel involved in the “creation, administration or management” of those agreements.
In addition, the department asked for the names and contact information of college personnel involved in exchange student visitor programs and anyone involved in international research collaborations.
A spokesman for Penn did not immediately return a request for comment.
The investigation into Penn’s foreign funding is at least the third such inquiry started by the agency in the past three weeks. On April 18, the department said it was investigating Harvard University’s foreign donations, and April 25, the department said it was probing disclosures submitted by the University of California, Berkeley. Those investigations included similar requests for documents.
Representatives for U.C. Berkeley and Harvard said they were in full compliance with the law.
The investigations are part of a widening pressure campaign that the Trump administration has launched on the nation’s elite universities, a strategy to aimed at realigning what they view as the liberal tilt of elite universities.
