American universities raked in nearly a billion dollars in the past four years from mystery donors in offshore tax havens, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. While the universities listed the unnamed donations as coming from places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, the Free Beacon traced millions of dollars back to donors linked to China.
The news comes as the Trump administration prepares to crack down on foreign influence on college campuses, following years of Biden administration policies that have shielded the names of foreign university donors from the public.
Since 2021, U.S. universities reported receiving over $600 million from donors in Bermuda, $280 million from Guernsey, $25 million from the British Virgin Islands, $25 million from the Bahamas, $17.5 million from Cayman Islands, and $11 million from the island of Jersey, Department of Education records show. While universities are required to disclose those foreign donors to the federal government under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, the Biden administration broke precedent with prior administrations by withholding the names of foreign donors to the public.
As a result, for the past four years, the Department of Education only released the names of the countries where each donation came from. Tax haven countries represented some of the largest sources of funding during that time, raising questions about transparency and where the actual money is coming from.
In some cases, records reviewed by the Free Beacon show, it's coming from China.
The University of Pennsylvania, for example, reported in June 2022 that it received $3 million from a donor in the Cayman Islands to support the "Penn Wharton China center including research articles and case studies," according to federal records. But state records from Pennsylvania—where schools are required to report the names of foreign donors—list the donor as E-House Enterprise Holdings, a Chinese real estate company with a listed address in Hong Kong. The company is led by Xin Zhou, a Chinese national who serves on Penn's Wharton Board of Advisors.
State records also show that Penn received $1 million in 2023 from Qihui Holdings, a shareholder of Chinese shopping platform Meituan Dianping. Penn's federal disclosure lists the money as coming from a donor in the British Virgin Islands to support the "Artificial Intelligence Program at the Wharton School." Meituan Dianping's cofounder and former CEO, Tao Zhang, is a Chinese national who attended the Wharton School.
Both Zhou and Zhang's past contributions to Penn have come under scrutiny. In 2020, the Free Beacon reported that a $3 million donation the school claimed was from Zhou actually came from a Hong Kong company owned by a Shanghai businessman with deep ties to Chinese government officials. Penn also sparked controversy for taking money from Zhang in 2022 after Fox News reported on his company’s involvement in party-building activities for the Chinese Communist Party and CCP-connected shareholders, including Tencent and Alibaba.
The Pennsylvania records were obtained by watchdog group Americans for Public Trust and shared with the Free Beacon. The group's director, Caitlin Sutherland, called for a federal foreign funding reporting system that includes donors' names.
"The current system allows the individual sources of the foreign money to remain obscured from the public, which raises serious concerns when the donors hail from adversarial countries like China and Qatar," said Sutherland. "The American public deserves to know exactly who is buying influence in our higher education system."
In addition to Penn, state records show that Carnegie Mellon University received $100,000 through the Cayman Islands from the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute in August 2022. The donation does not appear to be listed in federal foreign donor records.
Tianqiao Chen, a billionaire and reported member of the Chinese Communist Party, sparked outcry from Republican lawmakers last year after reporting revealed him to be the second-largest foreign farmland owner in the United States.
Other university disclosures also raise questions about the true sources of donations from known tax havens.
In 2023, Yale reported receiving a $79 million donation from the island of Guernsey to fund an "institute to enhance the understanding of human cognition." Yale’s Wu Tsai Institute, which focuses on the study of human cognition, is bankrolled by Joseph Tsai, the chairman of China’s Alibaba Group. Alibaba has extensive ties to the Chinese government, which owns stakes in a number of its business units.
Although state records aren’t available to confirm that Tsai is the donor—Connecticut does not publish such records—the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation is based in the island of Guernsey, according to corporate disclosures. Yale has reported receiving over $400 million from Guernsey since 2020.
Yale faced an investigation under the first Trump administration in connection with donations from Tsai. The Department of Education accused the school of failing to disclose hundreds of millions in foreign grants, including $30 million from Tsai.
Tsai is also a major donor to the China Center at the University of San Diego, a school that reported receiving $14 million from the island of Guernsey in 2022 and 2023.
Penn, Carnegie Mellon, and Yale did not respond to requests for comment.
Earlier this month, the American Enterprise Institute published a report noting that American universities have "failed to report billions in foreign funding, which drove the first Trump administration to launch several investigations into Section 117 noncompliance." The report noted that schools under investigation reported receiving nearly $900 million in funding from China.
Mark Schneider, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Free Beacon that the Biden administration "did almost nothing" to investigate whether schools were complying with the disclosure requirements. He expects this to change quickly under the Trump administration.
Schneider said donors could use tax haven countries as a way of "hiding the ultimate source of the money."
"There’s a lot of suspicion of elite institutions," said Schneider. "They’re going to be under a lot of pressure and [face] a lot of investigations into their practices."