Trump administration investigates California University over foreign gift

The Trump administration launched an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday, April 25, 2025.

The investigation centered on foreign funding, making it the latest university to be targeted by the federal government.

It revives criticism from several years ago about the university’s partnership with China’s Tsinghua University.

It comes after Donald Trump earlier this week signed a series of executive orders focused on universities.

These are Universities that Trump views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda.

One order called for harder enforcement of Section 117, a federal law requiring colleges to disclose foreign gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more.

Education secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement:

The Department of Education’s office of general counsel will investigate “UC Berkeley’s apparent failure to fully and accurately disclose significant funding received from foreign sources,”

UC Berkeley denied the government’s claims.

In his words, he said that for the last two years “UC Berkeley has been cooperating with federal inquiries regarding 117 reporting issues, and will continue to do so.”

The department cited media reports from 2023 about UC Berkeley.

It said the reports failed to disclose “hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from a foreign government” but didn’t mention the country.

On May 2023, the Daily Beast reported that UC Berkeley failed to report it got $220m from the Chinese government.

This it claimed Berkeley used to build a joint Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI).

The Institute was supposedly opened by UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University in 2014 in the city of Shenzhen.

Their aim was to focus on “strategic emerging industries”, according to the institute’s website.

The Guardian reports that last year, a report was presented by the Republican members of the House select committee.

It was on the Chinese Communist party and it found that US tax dollars have contributed to China’s technological advancement and military modernization.

This was when American researchers worked with their Chinese peers in areas such as:

• hypersonic weapons,
• artificial intelligence,
• nuclear technology and,
• semiconductor technology.

In response to the report, UC Berkeley said Berkeley’s researchers engage only in research.

He claimed the results of the research were always openly disseminated around the world.

Berkeley added that the school was “not aware of any research by Berkeley faculty at TBSI conducted for any other purpose”.

The university also said then it would unwind its partnership.

The university said on Friday it’s no longer affiliated with TBSI.

Last week, the Department of Education demanded records from Harvard over foreign financial ties spanning the past decade.

It accused the school of filing “incomplete and inaccurate disclosures”.

Trump’s administration is sparring with Harvard over the university’s refusal to accept a list of demands over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests as well as its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

For Diaspora Digital Media Updates click on Whatsapp, or Telegram. For eyewitness accounts/ reports/ articles, write to: citizenreports@diasporadigitalmedia.com. Follow us on X (Fomerly Twitter) or Facebook