Judge Blocks Release of Foreign Donor List for Top Universities

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Education Department from releasing a list of foreign donors to Harvard, Columbia, and other prominent U.S. universities, citing the potential for "irreparable harm."

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued the temporary restraining order against the Trump administration, which had been preparing to publish the names of foreign donors who contributed up to $5.2 billion to these universities since 2020. An Education Department official noted that the majority of this sum came from non-natural person entities, such as foreign governments, militaries, businesses, or enterprises potentially linked to foreign intelligence agencies.

"Once published, the information will likely never escape the public eye. Indeed, the disclosure may produce downstream harms to the safety of donors who live in politically repressive countries," Chutkan wrote in her five-page order. She added that the disclosure would likely violate the Administrative Procedure Act.

The order will remain in effect for 28 days while Chutkan considers a more permanent injunction. The Association of American Universities (AAU), which filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education earlier on Thursday, argued that donors provided funds with the understanding that their privacy would be protected.

The AAU, representing at least 69 major research universities in the U.S., including the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, stated that if the Trump administration succeeded in its disclosure efforts, it "would chill the lawful generosity that supports scholarships, research, and teaching on campuses across the country."

An Education Department spokeswoman, Ellen Keast, countered that the ruling would prevent the administration from identifying schools receiving funds from "malign foreign actors that fund centers and faculty who promote anti-Western ideologies and support partnerships that are designed to export sensitive technology to geopolitical adversaries." Keast asserted that Americans deserve transparency regarding billions flowing into U.S. campuses from overseas and pledged to fight the AAU in court.

An Education Department probe into the University of California-Berkeley over funding from China was initiated in April 2025. President Trump signed an executive action that same month to strengthen enforcement of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires universities to report foreign gifts or contracts exceeding $250,000. The AAU, however, contended that the department had already been obtaining donor identities since 2020 during the first Trump administration.

An Education Department official suggested that the push for disclosure was a pretext to prevent public awareness of entities funneling billions to U.S. universities, primarily for intellectual property theft and to influence curriculum, particularly concerning anti-Western and anti-Zionist ideologies.