The College Fix ‘We cannot allow a dangerous communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education’
Top Republican lawmakers representing seven different U.S. House committees on Monday announced a probe focused on China’s involvement in American higher education for “strategic and propaganda goals,” citing concerns such as theft and spying by the communist-controlled country.
“China has strategically invested in U.S. academia to attempt to steal confidential information and technology from U.S. companies and even the U.S. government,” the legislators stated in a May 4 letter sent to U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
The GOP lawmakers have called on the Education Department to supply them with any and all preliminary findings or reports detailing gifts from China to U.S. colleges and universities, as well as details on all open and closed investigations by the Education Department “regarding false or misleading reporting of foreign gifts.”
Signatories are led by House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, who noted on Twitter in publicizing the probe that lawmakers will zero in on “China’s infiltration of U.S. colleges.”
??? NEW: 7 top House committee Republicans announce probe into China's infiltration of U.S. colleges
“We cannot allow a dangerous communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education, plain and simple” – @Jim_Jordan
More➡️ https://t.co/GwgpkDFkhn pic.twitter.com/C3JQbJIGyJ
— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) May 4, 2020
“We cannot allow a dangerous communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education, plain and simple,” Jordan wrote.
The lawmakers in the memo ask for the documents to be provided by May 11, as well as a staff-level briefing on the matter, noting the Committee on Oversight and Reform “has broad authority to investigate ‘any matter’ at ‘any time’ under House Rule X.”
