Republicans Press Harvard on China Ties as New Details Emerge

Harvard Business dean serves on Beijing advisory board, met Communist Party officials in October 2024

Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar traveled to Beijing in October 2024. Photo ©Stu Rosner for Harvard Business School

The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are stepping up pressure on Harvard related to its dealings with China, even as new and previously undisclosed details about those dealings are emerging.

Yesterday’s announcement by the Department of Homeland Security that it is terminating Harvard’s certification to host foreign students and scholars faulted Harvard for its dealings with the Chinese Communist Party.

“Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the CCP, including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide,” a Homeland Security press release said. Usually the only genocide that gets much attention on the Harvard campus is the one Israel is falsely accused of perpetrating in Gaza.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Secretary Kristi Noem said in the release.

The release listed a series of China-related issues:

Harvard hosted and trained members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide, even after its 2020 designation on the U.S. Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals List, with engagements continuing as recently as 2024.

Harvard researchers collaborated with China-based academics on projects funded by an Iranian government agent and partnered with Chinese universities tied to military advancements, including aerospace and optics research, using U.S. Department of Defense funds.

Harvard partnered with individuals linked to China’s defense-industrial base, including conducting robotics research with military applications.

In addition to Noem’s action, which a federal district judge in Boston today temporarily ordered restrained at Harvard’s request, Congress has been active on the Harvard China issue.

On May 15, Senator Tom Cotton, a Harvard graduate, sent a letter to Secretary of State Rubio and to Treasury Secretary Bessent, urging them to investigate. Cotton wrote:

According to a recent business intelligence firm report, Harvard renamed its Public Health School the “Harvard T. Chan School for Public Health” after receiving a $350 million donation from the Chan family and its Morningside Foundation in 2014, which has significant ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Harvard engages in activities that glorify China’s Cultural Revolution and is linked to the China’s Thousand Talents Program. Most troublingly is the report that Harvard trained XPCC personnel and other senior Chinese officials on healthcare financing.

In 2020, the Trump Administration imposed human rights sanctions on XPCC under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act for XPCC’s involvement in severe human rights abuses. The Act prohibits any contribution of funds, goods, and services, to XPCC. Harvard University’s actions appear to violate these sanctions.

On May 19, a second letter to Harvard, from the Chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, Tim Walberg; the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, John Moolenaar, and the Chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, Elise Stefanik, demanded from the university “all communications between Harvard (all schools) and any individual who is a member or affiliate of the CCP” and also “A detailed list in native Microsoft Excel of all projects in which an individual affiliated with Harvard received funding from any entity within the DoD that included a PRC-based collaborator.”

The members of Congress wrote of “serious concerns about whether Harvard adequately protects taxpayer funded research and U.S. national security, and whether it takes sufficient steps to ensure that its activities do not further the CCP’s ongoing genocide or bolster the PRC’s military capabilities.”

I’ve unearthed some new information on this front.