State Secretary Marco Rubio is insisting on investigating whether the Harvard University has violated federal sanctions by working together on a health insurance conference in China that possibly included civil servants on the blacklist of the US government, according to people who are familiar with the issue and documents that are rated by the New York Times.
Last month, Mr Rubio signed a recommendation at the Ministry of Finance to open an investigation, of which experts and former Treasury officials said it was an unusual attempt by a cabinet secretary to focus on a domestic entity for enforcement of sanctions.
Whether the agency within the treasury that deals with sanctions, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, has opened an investigation in response was unclear – but such a movement could expose Harvard to considerable legal risks. Mr Rubio’s action is the newest example of that of the Trump government The approach of the entire government To bring the Ivy League university to heel.
President Trump has been looking for months to impose his political agenda on Harvard by reforming his curriculum, recordings and recruitment processes. The effort was initially mainly based on accusations that university officials had not done enough to tackle anti -Semitism on campus. In recent weeks, however, the focus of the administration has been extended to other issues, including accusations about the foreign ties of Harvard, in particular with China.
A potential investigation into sanctions shows how Harvard’s problems with the government extend much further than the question of whether the school will continue to receive federal financing. Mr. Trump and his allies seem determined to raise almost all aspects of the institution, which have long symbolized the height of higher learning in the country and has attracted influential scientists from all over the world.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Finance refused to comment on a possible or pending sanction research. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also refused to comment.
The health insurance conference, known as the Health Finance Training, started in 2019 as a joint venture between Harvard, the World Bank and the National Health Insurance Administration, the arm of the Chinese government that supervises the state -supported health care system, according to the University’s website. Over the years, training has been aimed at topics such as “Innovative payment methods for providers“And”Prices and payment for the health of the internet. “
The university has promoted the event, which in some years attracted more than 200 people, as an important part of a broader “Harvard China Health Partnership” in the TH Chan School for Public Health. University officials have previously described the event as aimed at expanding access to high -quality health care for 1.4 billion people in China.
Behind Mr Rubio’s Sanctions Push is the presence of civil servants of a Chinese group called the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps with some, if not all, of the conferences since 2019. The XPCC is known in northwestern China for the construction of cities and the running of their own. The group is also responsible for Systemic human rights violations against Uyghurs And other ethnic minorities in the region, according to the US government.
The Chinese government formed the XPCC more than seven decades ago as A paramilitary organization in charge of setting a distant region With many ethnic groups and a few militias. The Ministry of Finance imposed sanctions on the group in 2020.
Harvard has carried out an internal evaluation in the involvement of the XPCC at the conference, but it was unclear which details had surfaced, according to two people who were familiar with the research that was anonymity to discuss internal university deliberations.
A Harvard spokesperson refused to comment.
A Archived version of a Harvard -Webpage About the inaugural conference noted that participants include the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in the training. That event took place a year before the US government focused on the group on sanctions, but the mention of the XPCC has Since removed.
A Chinese government website on the 2023 conference shows that participants include chinese health officials that year – three years after the US had imposed sanctions on the XPCC – scientists from ‘Topuniversiteits’, such as Harvard, and representatives of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.
Nevertheless, the involvement of the XPCC in the conference only recently received attention from Trump -Bondigen, then A report on the links from Harvard to China Published on April 22 by Strategy Risks, an intelligence company established in New York that specializes in company exposure to China. The report was funded by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that has advised Republican policy makers.
Since then, the data from the report has been emphasized in news articles of conservative media and public statements from Republican officials.
On May 15, Senator Tom Cotton van Arkansas quoted the Strategy Risks report in one Letter to Mr Rubio and Minister of Finance Scott Bessentinsist on an investigation into Harvard’s Public Health School. On May 19, the Republicans sent in the House Education Committee A request for records to Harvard Partly the involvement of the XPCC at the conference.
On May 22, The Ministry of Interior Security said The fact that Harvard members of the group had ‘hosted and trained’ and had included a link to a Fox News article about the House Republican Records request in her press release.
Research into potential sanctions violations can take months or years, while fines vary from a warning from the government to considerable financial damage.
Other cabinet secretaries – such as the State Secretary – often coordinate with the Minister of Finance on foreign persons, groups or countries that they think they should be subject to sanctions. But it is atypical for the most important diplomat of the nation to opt for an American person, group or company for a potential violation, according to John Smith, a former director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department.
Sanctions studies, Mr Smith said, are usually started after reporting in the media or companies, the intelligence community or law enforcement.
“I would not say that it is wrong or incorrect – I would just say that it is unusual and not the usual business results,” said Mr. Smith.
Usually the Office or Foreign Assets Control decides, after learning a possible violation, whether he should open an investigation. If the office ultimately finds misconduct, the treasury can impose civil fines and recommend that the Ministry of Justice has criminal prosecution. In particularly serious cases, companies can be affected with civil and criminal fines associated with fines as high as billions of dollars.
Harvard has confronted a tumultuous for two months since Mr. Trump has set his sights on the school. In some respects, Harvard has fallen victim to the success of his many years of push to extend his global influence, which has abruptly crashed into the nationalist impulses that nourish the “America First” agenda of Mr Trump.
Many of Harvard’s attempts to go in China in China, started relatively recently, when Washington was busy with Beijing as a strategic and economic partner. China is now considered wider as an opponent, a shift that accelerated during the first administration of Mr Trump.
Harvard established a first lawsuit against the administration in April and accused the government of trying to assert control of the school with threats to reduce federal financing. By that time, the Trump administration had already blocked $ 2.2 billion in various subsidies. Since the lawsuit has been brought, the university and its research partners have lost almost another $ 1.5 billion to support the National Institutes of Health, Defense and other federal agencies.
The university is also fighting in court to attempt by Mr Trump and the Homeland Security department to withdraw Visa from the international students of Harvard, who are responsible for about a fourth of the student body and ban them from the country. Harvard is the target of additional studies from the Education Department, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Health and Human Services department and the Ministry of Justice.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder and chief executive of strategic risks, said he started his company in 2021 after working as a journalist in Beijing. In 2022 he published a book, ‘America Second’, which follows the recent transition from the relationship between the US-China, from economic partners to open rivals.
Mr Stone Fish said that his report, cited by Conservatives, should not be read as a “general conviction” of Harvard. He praised the university to continue what he described as crucial research and exhibition in China. But he also argued that the XPCC “was one of the world’s most notorious organizations” and that the university partnerships should be held according to a high standard.
Education secretary Linda McMahon, who spoke on Tuesday during a Bloomberg news event in Washington, defended the punishing approach to Harvard of the government and said it was a way to shift an ideological tilt that she considers hostile to conservatives.
Asked to summarize the successes of the administration so far in his battle with Harvard, she pointed to the Departure of two faculty members in March From the center of the University for Midden -Eastern studies.
“We have noticed that they have replaced their heads in the middle -old studies because they thought they had to make some adjustments there,” said Mrs. McMahon. “So we are happy to see that.”
All federal financing reductions for Harvard – and eight of the 10 federal investigations into the university – have happened since the professors left the campus.
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