Now More than Ever, America needs Transparency in Higher Education
A recent House Education and Workforce Committee investigation into antisemitism revealed that Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative had received over $630,000 dollars from Qatar’s foreign ministry in 2024. Bridge, a research venture ostensibly aimed at combatting Islamophobia, was required by the terms of their contract with Qatar to “consult” with organizations with connections to Qatar’s foreign ministry, to “consider recommendations regarding sessions, themes, and speakers."
In plain English: a major university, housed in the Nation’s Capital, outsourced its judgment on programming and personnel to the Foreign Ministry of a monarch that also happens to be one of the biggest financiers of radicalism and terrorism in the world.
The Bridge Initiative has courted controversy before. Its parent organization was created with a massive gift from Saudi Arabia, its former Chair was defenestrated when he publicly advised Iran to strike US military bases, and it has attacked Muslims who raise concerns about radical forms of Islam. But this kind of capitulation to the basic functioning of such an institute is troubling on a deeper level. Particularly as this influence was gained for only a few hundred thousand dollars.
Why was it necessary to have a full-blown Congressional investigation to discover these disturbing facts? For two straight cycles, Congress has failed to fix foreign funding disclosure by failing to pass the DETERRENT Act, which would significantly update current law, specifically Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, that requires universities to disclose foreign funding.
Currently, the law technically requires Universities to disclose the amount they receive from foreign sources, but they are not required to provide details on how the funds are used or what is required to obtain them. Additionally, there is currently no real enforcement mechanism.
DETERRENT changes all this. In essence, the bill fulfills the original intent of Section 117 by mandating sufficient details be provided so that watchdog groups, journalists, and policymakers have much easier access to information, and it makes those mandates enforceable.
Even defenders of Higher Education admit there are genuine problems. Two researchers with the Association of American Universities admit that under current rules, the public “cannot actually drill down to see the details of the individual gifts and contracts,” and given that, there is no way for outsiders to adequately evaluate the funds in question.
A multiethnic, multifaith, and multi-issue coalition of 26 organizations, including my employer, the North American Values Institute (NAVI), recently sent a letter to Congressional leaders, urging immediate passage. They’re correct; this issue has been stalled for too long.
The DETERRENT Act was originally introduced shortly after the October 7th, 2023, massacre of over 1,200 Israeli citizens by Hamas and subsequent anti-Israel protests on campus. However, DETERRENT’s origins actually have little to do with the Middle East. If you go back further, a bipartisan Senate influence on US higher education had a lot more to do with making foreign funding transparency in higher education a major issue, and the bill had been in development for months, and in some iterations, years. This isn’t a proxy fight over Middle East issues, but a recognition that many foreign adversaries are gaining a foothold in American institutions.
DETERRENT was quickly voted out of Committee and passed on the House floor with bipartisan support, 246-170, including 31 Democrats. Yet it was never brought up for a vote in the Senate. More recently, in 2025, a reintroduced and lightly updated DETERRENT Act passed the House, again receiving a clear bipartisan majority that included 31 Democrats. But it’s stalled in the Senate again.
The Senate’s hesitation is misguided. A recent study by Yale University found that public trust in higher education is now very low, particularly at elite institutions that are more likely to receive foreign funding. While there are many reasons for the public’s mistrust, playing hide-the-ball on foreign funds can only make this problem worse.
Common complaints about DETERRENT don’t hold up. It does nothing to stop foreign funds; it merely demands transparency and lets the public decide. The disclosure requirements coming from most countries, other than a small handful (Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea) are still fairly modest. It does nothing to dictate or modify curriculum or programming; it merely requires foreign funders of such programs to be disclosed.
The Trump Administration has done a lot to bring this issue to the forefront. In Trump’s first term, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was the first department head to even attempt to enforce the law on foreign funds, and she found massive under-disclosures. More recently, it created a portal that provides more information about universities' foreign funding than has been publicly available before.
But the Administration is reaching the end of what it can do without Congress. And DETERRENT would ensure that it would not require Congress to ferret out every single bad act of every University. It would, indeed, deter such bad acts by making them more public.
Recent wars, in Iran, in Gaza, in Ukraine, have demonstrated the unparalleled strength of the American military and its equipment. But these wars are not fought solely on the battlefield. And America’s competition with China will likely be decided before a shot is fired. Our enemies are working in relative secrecy to co-opt our institutions and gain an upper hand in the information space. They are using our openness against us. We should make our openness work for us by making sure everyone knows what they are up to. DETERRENT does just that.
