Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx told Newsmax that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has not yet addressed Chinese involvement in United States colleges.
Joining “The Record with Greta Van Susteren” on Tuesday, the North Carolina lawmaker said the House Committee on Education and the Workforce she chairs pressed Cardona earlier in the day about foreign funding.
“The secretary has actually got a lot of letters from us, which he has not answered adequately,” Foxx shared when asked if Cardona responded to her letter on if the department was taking seriously foreign gifts to U.S. education institutions.
Foxx and her committee were initially alerted to the problem due to the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., a think tank associated with the University of Pennsylvania.
Named after President Joe Biden after he donated over $900,000, the institution received national attention after approximately 25 to 30 classified documents were found at his old personal office.
The New York Post later cited public records showing that the university received almost $30 million in anonymous gifts from Chinese donors after the Penn Biden Center was announced in 2017.
In Foxx’s letter, she pointed out that the Trump administration found nearly $6.5 billion in unreported foreign money received by colleges using intermediaries, “including functionally captive foundations, [and] foreign operating units.”
The congresswoman also quoted Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which precludes the murky donations, when questioning Cardona if he has enforced them or even conducted oversight on the issue.
“We get responses on some of the letters we send, but they’re pretty evasive, pretty vague. But we’ll keep pressing him,” Foxx stressed, adding that they were working closely with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
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