The Education Department is investigating two American universities—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland—regarding whether they’ve properly reported contracts with and gifts from several foreign governments and tech-related entities, according to letters sent to the institutions in late September and recently released to the general public.
Officials are specifically interested in records of anything they’ve received from the Russian, Chinese, Saudi Arabian and Qatar governments, as well as Huawei, ZTE and other foreign companies that have recently been exposed to more severe federal scrutiny.
In each correspondence, the agency’s Acting General Counsel Reed Rubinstein, who is leading the investigation, wrote that the government “is concerned that [the universities’] reporting may not fully capture all gifts, contracts, and/or restricted and conditional gifts or contracts from or with all foreign sources” to each institution and their affiliates.
The department allots both MIT and UMD 30 days to produce records across 14 related requests, including all those referencing gifts or contracts with foreign sources dating back to the beginning of 2014. The letters also ask each to share specific IRS and tax information between 2014 and 2018, and they also offer them the opportunity to list any gifts or contracts that were not previously properly reported, with detailed explanations regarding why they failed to do so.
On top of the overall institutions’ dealings, Education also asks for a list of all their inside people who have been supported by a gift or contract from international sources—“e.g., a research scientist working on a project developing artif ..
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