On Oct. 1, the Association of American Universities filed a lawsuit and temporary restraining order against the United States Department of Education, challenging its move to publish the identities of foreign donors to U.S. universities. After an Oct. 1 hearing, federal judge Tanya Chutkan sided with the AAU.
The AAU suit was also against Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, the Department of State and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and named alleged violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the First Amendment, the Trade Secrets Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
Chutkan, the judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granted a temporary injunction on the release of donor information, which the Education Department was planning to publish on Oct. 2. In her decision, Chutkan wrote that the disclosure could have produced “downstream harms to the safety of donors who live in politically repressive countries.”
“The publication of the donors’ identities would irreversibly eviscerate all privacy interests they maintain in their personal information, which, to date, has remained confidential,” Chutkan wrote. “By contrast, defendants have not identified any serious harm they would suffer were this court to temporarily enjoin the impending publication.”
Unless extended, Chutkan’s order will expire 28 days after her Oct. 1 decision.
The AAU represents 69 U.S. universities in the United States, including Brown and the rest of the Ivy League. In a press release following the lawsuit, the AAU wrote that Congress’s Higher Education Act “does not call for publishing private donors’ personal information, and the Constitution and Supreme Court precedents protect individuals from compelled public exposure of their charitable associations.”
According to the Education Department’s Foreign Gift and Contract Public Transparency Dashboard, Brown has received almost $352 million from foreign funding sources, the 48th most of 583 reporting institutions and second least in the Ivy League. England contributes $70.7 million of Brown’s foreign donations, and China contributes $68.3 million.
Harvard has received almost $4.7 billion in foreign funding, the most of any listed institution, and Dartmouth has received the least in the Ivy League with $134 million.
The dashboard includes transactions prior to Sept. 30. Institutions are only required to report gifts and contracts valued over $250,000.
“Publication would expose donors to harassment, reputational harm and, in some cases, real danger in their home countries,” wrote the AAU in its press release. “It would chill the lawful generosity that supports scholarships, research and teaching on campuses across the country. And it would signal to every donor and every institution that a federal agency’s written commitment cannot be trusted.”
“For generations, taxpayers have invested billions in U.S. colleges and universities expecting them to advance the national interest and cultivate the next generation of American leaders,” Department of Education spokesperson Ellen Keast wrote in an email to The Herald. “At the same time, elite universities were cashing multi-million-dollar checks from malign foreign actors.”
“Americans deserve transparency about the billions flowing from overseas to U.S. campuses, and we will fight AAU in court to deliver it,” Keast wrote.
Brown has been lobbying against a bill called the Deterrent Act, which would lower the reporting threshold from $250,000 to $50,000.
Keast also wrote that Congress “can and should” pass the Deterrent Act, which would lower the reporting threshold from $250,000 to $50,000. The Act would also require institutions of higher education to obtain Department of Education waivers to receive any money from “countries of concern,” which include China and Russia.
Jeremiah Farr is a senior staff writer covering university hall and higher education.
