Chinese Gifts to UPenn Rose After Penn Biden Center Opened

There was a “startling” spike in Chinese donations to the University of Pennsylvania after the Penn Biden Center opened at the school in 2017, according to a former Department of Education official.

Paul Moore, who served as chief investigative counsel for the department during the Trump administration, described the uptick in contributions as “extraordinary” in congressional testimony Thursday, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Between 2017 and 2022, UPenn received more than $100 million from Chinese contributors; the school received $19 million in the four years prior to 2017, according to the Free Beacon.

Although the university has reportedly said that no foreign donations were allocated for the Penn Biden Center and that the think tank is funded by the school’s general budget, Moore said that general fund contributions could have been indirectly funneled to the center.

“Those funds were co-mingled, and certainly went to the general operations, and may have gone to the Biden Center,” he said, according to the Free Beacon.

Federal law requires that schools that receive federal funds disclose their foreign donations to the Department of Education.

When Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., asked Moore if there were similar increases in Chinese contributions at other universities, he replied, “Not in that time frame. Absolutely not.”

“It was particularly startling to see with UPenn what they had received. That was very notable,” he said.

The former Trump education official told the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development that his office did not investigate the gifts because there was nothing to suggest that UPenn was breaking any laws by accepting them.

“Members of Congress wrote to us, urging us to open an investigation,” he reportedly said. “It would have been a very political thing, inappropriate, frankly, for the office of general counsel.”

A number of senior Biden administration officials previously worked at the Penn Biden Center, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who served as the center’s director.

According to the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog, the foreign donations have raised concerns about influence-buying, and the group has called on the Education Department to make public the names of anonymous donors.

“The Department of Education’s policy of hiding the identities of foreign entities showering our universities with billions of dollars is promoting a toxic brew of dark money and corruption,” Tom Anderson, the director of the center’s Government Integrity Project, told the Free Beacon in January.

Moore seemed to agree, stating in his congressional testimony that “Congress should clearly ban the practice of anonymizing donors.”

“Only by knowing the identity of the foreign donor can the American people and government officials be sufficiently informed to address any commensurate threat to our national security or academic freedom,” he said.