The Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to investigate Stanford’s foreign donation policies, revealed Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ, in a Bloomberg interview Monday. The investigation stemmed from concern over the safety of sensitive information and research, she said.
Stanford currently ranks sixth among US universities receiving foreign gifts and contracts, with over $2.8 billion donated since 1986. Donors from China top the list with $413.2 million in total funding. A report from the Department of Education ranked Stanford fourth among universities for donations from “countries of concern,” including China and Russia.
It is among the many colleges and universities that have faced budget cuts since President Trump took office in January 2025. The University has lost around $140 million in funding.
The DOJ has declined to comment on the status of the investigation.
“Stanford conducts rigorous due diligence for all philanthropic gifts and sponsored research, with enhanced scrutiny applied to international sources, particularly those from countries of concern,” University spokesperson Luisa Rapport wrote to The Daily.
The anticipated investigation follows a probe by the DOJ into Stanford Medical School in late March. Along with Ohio State University (OSU) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Stanford received a request for data focused “on possible race discrimination in medical school admissions,” Dhillon wrote in a letter to the schools. Critics argued that the probe “ignored racial inequities” and “erase[d] the relevance of race in health and education.”
Rapport said that Stanford maintains the right to refuse international gifts if the funding source “raises legal or ethical concerns, if conditions on the gift could compromise the independence or integrity of University research or if acceptance would otherwise be deemed inappropriate.”
Stanford has so far avoided the government’s fiercest scrutiny, which has been reserved for peer institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University over charges of campus antisemitism. In the Monday interview, Dhillon said that Stanford has mostly been spared not “because of [Stanford’s] virtue” but “because I’m staffing up.”
A whistleblower complaint by DOJ attorneys recently alleged that the department’s antisemitism cases against Ivy league institutions were predetermined and politically motivated. Investigations by the Trump Administration into universities such as Brown University were rushed and lacked evidence, the whistleblowers said.