US Justice Department official flags Stanford University for scrutiny over foreign donations

Stanford University is facing increased scrutiny from the US Justice Department over donations from foreign sources and its practices around international students and admissions, according to a senior agency official.Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said on Aug 17 during an interview at Bloomberg’s Washington office that the department is gearing up to examine the university’s foreign funding policies more closely.Her department already opened an investigation into admissions practices at Stanford’s medical school in March.The Trump administration has been hammering elite universities and colleges, including Harvard and Columbia, over allegations of anti-Semitism and discriminatory admissions practices.Stanford, in Palo Alto, California, has not received the same level of scrutiny that the Trump administration directed at many of its peers.Stanford is not getting passed over “because of their virtue”, Dhillon said in a wide-ranging interview. “It’s because I am staffing up.”Stanford receives the fourth-highest level of funding from foreign sources in “countries of concern” among US universities, according to data from the Department of Education. Dhillon also expressed concern over funding for professors’ work and for laboratories that deal with potentially sensitive information from a national security perspective. “I think it’s fairly obvious which of our elite institutions have a high proportion of foreign funding,” Dhillon said. “Stanford has a high proportion of foreign students from Asia and foreign funding.”Stanford said in a statement that it conducts “rigorous due diligence for all philanthropic gifts and sponsored research, with enhanced scrutiny applied to international sources, particularly those from countries of concern”.The university said it reviews “restricted party screening, assessment of ties to foreign governments, and evaluation of research security implications, among other measures”.Stanford also said it reserves the right to decline any gift – domestic or international – if the source of funds raises legal or ethical concerns.In June, Dhillon’s office launched a probe into Harvard University over possible foreign influence in its financial aid decisions. Dhillon said she plans to investigate more colleges over similar issues. After taking office in 2025, Dhillon sent letters to 50 top institutions of higher learning, scrutinising their undergraduate admissions practices. She followed those with more letters seeking information from law and medical schools. The Trump administration froze federal funding to more than half a dozen universities before Dhillon was sworn in, but she eventually took on a leading role in negotiating settlements to restore it, including with Cornell University, she said. Harvard, which is still locked in a legal battle with the administration over the freeze, has yet to make a deal with the administration, and the DOJ has continued to open lawsuits and investigations into the school. Dhillon said that while talks had slowed, she still sees a path to a possible settlement. BLOOMBERG