The University of Michigan is under federal scrutiny after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the United States.
The Education Department on Tuesday opened an investigation into the university’s foreign funding, citing the pair of cases that were announced days apart in June. It said the “highly disturbing criminal charges” raise concerns about Michigan’s vulnerability to national security threats from China.
“Despite the University of Michigan’s history of downplaying its vulnerabilities to malign foreign influence, recent reports reveal that UM’s research laboratories remain vulnerable to sabotage,” said Paul Moore, chief investigative counsel of the department.
President Donald Trump has made it a priority to increase transparency around foreign gifts and contracts to U.S. universities, especially those tied to China. Similar investigations have been opened at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley.
It joins efforts from Republicans in Congress who have urged universities to cut research ties with China, saying China exploits the relationships to steal technology. Michigan ended a partnership with a university in Shanghai in January amid pressure from House Republicans who called it a security risk.
The new investigation demands financial records from Michigan, along with information about research collaborations with institutions outside the U.S. The Education Department accuses Michigan of being “incomplete, inaccurate and untimely” in its public disclosures around funding from foreign sources.
Federal authorities brought charges in June against a Chinese scientist and his girlfriend — who worked at a lab at the University of Michigan — after the FBI said it halted their effort to bring a toxic fungus into the United States.
Days later, authorities arrested a Chinese scientist who was arriving in the U.S. and has been accused of shipping biological material to a laboratory at the University of Michigan.
Noxious fungus causes “head blight,” a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice, and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Michigan said in a statement. Fusarium graminearum’s toxins can cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock.
In June, the university said it condemned any actions that undermine national security and announced a review of protocols related to research security.
In a letter to the university, however, the Education Department said some school officials have downplayed the vulnerability of research collaborations with Chinese institutions. It singles out Ann Chih Lin, director of the university’s Center for Chinese Studies, who has publicly said the threat of technology theft from China is overstated.
“Lin’s apparent indifference to the national security concerns of the largest single source of funding for UM’s annual research expenditures — the American taxpayer — is particularly unsettling,” Education Department officials wrote.