The Pentagon ordered 30 U.S. universities on Monday to review their partnerships with mostly Chinese universities and military training institutions, and to cut any arrangements it deems problematic within two weeks or risk losing funding.
A U.S. official said the schools include Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University. The deadline turns what could have been a broad policy signal into an immediate test for campuses that rely on federal research money and have spent years trimming ties to the institutions now under scrutiny.
Emil Michael said the Department of War has zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise national security, a line the Pentagon used to frame the order as a safeguard for taxpayer-funded research. The Department of Defense also said it is acting after releasing an updated list of 130 foreign institutions last month that it says could increase the chance that U.S. government-funded research and development is misappropriated; the vast majority of those institutions were Chinese, and the list also included the University of Science and Technology of China, the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, and several Iranian and Russian institutions.
The pressure is sharper because the order does not spell out which specific partnerships must end. Sarah Spreitzer said most of the American Council on Education’s member institutions moved away from research partnerships with those schools in the years after the first version of the list was developed during Trump’s first term, and she warned that universities worry they could be held liable for relationships that began before the list existed. She also said, “We don’t appreciate the implication that we are not good partners on research security, given that we helped create this list, and given that we’ve always partnered with the federal government when there has been national security concerns,” a complaint that cuts to the center of the dispute.
The broader backdrop is an administration increasingly focused on China’s global influence, while the Justice Department separately investigates whether Harvard University allowed Chinese donors to create scholarships that exclude American students. For the 30 schools now on the clock, the unanswered question is narrower and more urgent: which partnerships the Pentagon will treat as problematic, and whether universities can unwind them before the funding threat lands.
