The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is pressing to investigate whether Hether Harvard university violated federal sanctions by collaborating at a health insurance conference in China that may have included officials in the blacklist for the matter to the new Windernment to people’s people.
Mr. Rubio signed a recommendation to the Treasury Department last month to open an investigation, that experts and former Treasury officials said it was an unusual attempt by a cabinet secretary to attack a national application.
If the agency within the treasure that manages the sanctions, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, opened an investigation in response was not clear, but such a measure could be exposed to significant legal risks. The action of Mr. Rubio is the last example of the Trump administration government approach to take Heel to the Ivy League.
President Trump has sought for months to impose his political agenda to Harvard reformulating his curriculum, admissions and hiring processes. The initial effort was mainly based on accusations that university officials had not done enough to address anti -Semitism on campus. In recent weeks, however, the administration approach has expanded to other issues, including accusations on Harvard’s foreign ties, partly to China.
A possible sanctions investigation demonstrates how Harvard’s problems with the government extend far beyond the questions about whether the school will continue to receive federal funds. Trump and his allies seem determined to turn almost all aspects of the institution, which has long symbolized the pinnacle of higher education in the country and attracted influential academics around the world.
A spokesman for the Department of the Treasury said that the agency takes any accusation of violations of “extremely seriously” sanctions, but refused to comment on possible or pending penalties investigation. A state department spokeswoman declined to comment.
The Health Insurance Conference, known as the Training Course on Fining Health, Begen in 2019 as a joint company between Harvard, the World Bank and the National Health Insurance Administration, the Chinese government arm that exists the medical care system backed by the State, according to. Next, the training has focused on issues such as “innovative payment methods” and “prices and payment for internet health.”
The University has promoted the event, which in some years has generated more than 200 people, as a key part of a “broader Harvard Health Association” “within its public health school. University officials have previously described the event as destined to expand access to high quality medical care for 1,400 million people in China.
Behind the impulse of Mr. Rubios Sancions is the presence of officials of a Chinese state group called Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in some, if not all, of the conferences since 2019. The XPCC is known in northwest China for the cities of Buffin. The group is also responsible for systemic abuses of human rights Aginst Iguuros and other ethnic minorities in the region, according to the United States government.
The Chinese government formed the XPCC more than seven decades of the axis of a paramilitary organization responsible for resolving a distant region with many ethnic groups and some militias. The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the group in 2020.
Harvard has been carrying out an internal review of the participation of the XPCC in the conference, but it was not clear what details had become, according to two people familiar with the research they insisted on anonymity to discuss internal university deliberations.
A archived version of a Harvard website on the inaugural conference said that training participants included the Xinjiang production and construction body. That event occurred a year before the United States government attacked the group for sanctions, but since then the mention of the XPCC has been eliminated.
A Chinese government website on Conference 2023 shows that participants that year, three years after the United States imposed sanctions on the XPCC, included Chinese health officials, academics of “the best universities”, such as Harvard and body.
Even so, the participation of the XPCC in the conference only recently caught the attention of Trump’s allies, after a report on Harvard’s links to China published on April 22 by Strategy Risks, a New York -based intelligence company that specializes in corporate exosition. The report was founded by the Manhattan Institute, a group of conservative experts that has advised Republican political leaders.
Since then, the details of the report have stood out in news articles by conservative media and public statements of Republican officials.
On May 15, Senator Tom Cotton or Arkansas cited the strategy risk report in a letter to Mr. Rubio and the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besent, urging an investigation into the Harvard Public Health School. On May 19, the Republicans in the Education Committee of the House of Representatives sent a request for records to Harvard on, in part, the participation of the XPCC in the conference.
On May 22, the Department of National Security said that Harvard had “organized and trained” the group members and included a link to a Fox News article on the request for republican records of the Chamber in its press release.
Investigations of possible sanctions violations can take months or years, while sanctions range from a government warning to significant financial damage.
Other secretaries of the Cabinet, such as the Secretary of State, are often coordinated with the Secretary of the Treasury on foreign individuals, groups or countries who believe they should be subject to sanctions. Buty is atypical that the main diplomat of the Nation highlights an American individual, group or company for a possible violation, Chrowning John Smith, former director of the Office of Foreign Association Control of the Treasury Departments.
The investigations of sanctions, said Mr. Smith, generally begins after informing in media or companies, the intelligence community or the application of the law.
“I would say that it is incorrect or inappropriate, I would only say that it is unusual and not the usual business course,” said Smith.
Usually, after learning of a possible violation, the foreign asset control office decides whether to open an investigation. If the office finally finds irregularities, the Treasury could impose civil sanctions and recommend that the Department of Justice pursue criminal charges. In particular, atrocious instances, companies can be affected with civil and criminal sanctions that carry fines as high as billions of dollars.
Harvard has faced two tumultuous months since Trump appeared at school. Somehow, Harvard has been a victim for the success of his impulse year to expand his global influence, which has stared abruptly in the nationalist impulses that feed the “America First” agenda of Trump.
Many of Harvard’s attempts in China in China suffered relatively recently, when Washington was committed to Beijing as a strategic and economic partner. China now looks more widely as an adversary, a change that accelerated the duration of the first administration of Mr. Trump.
Harvard filed an initial lawsuit against the administration in April, accusing the government of trying to affirm control over the school with threats to reduce federal funds. By then, the Trump administration had already blocked $ 2.2 billion in several subsidies. Since the lawsuit was filed, the University and its research partners have lost almost another $ 1.5 billion in support of the National Health Institutes, the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.
The university is also fighting the courts on an effort by Mr. Trump and the Department of National Security to revoke visas of Harvard International Students, which represent approximately a quarter of the student body and exclude them from the country. Harvard has been attacked by additional investigations of the Department of Education, the Commission for Equal Employment Opportunities, the Department of Human Health and Services and the Department of Justice.
Isaac Stone Fish, founder and executive director of Risks Strategic, said he began his company in 2021 after working as a journalist in Beijing. In 2022, he published a book, “America Second”, which tracks the recent transition of the relationship between the United States and China, from economic partners to open rivals.
Mr. Stone Fish said that his report, cited by conservatives, should not be read as a “general condemn” or Harvard. He praised the university for advancing in what he described as crucial research and scholarship in China. But he also argued that the XPCC was “one of the most notorious organizations in the world” and that university associations should be heroes with a high level.
The Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, speaking at a Bloomberg news event in Washington on Tuesday, defended the administration’s punishment approach to Harvard and said it was a way to change an idological inclination that sees as hostile to conservatives.
When asked to summarize the successes of the Administration so far in his battle with Harvard, he pointed out the departure of two members of the Faculty in March of the Center for the Middle East Studies of the University.
“We have noticed that they replaced their heads of the Middle East because they felt they needed to make some adjustments there,” said McMahon. “So we are pleased to see that.”
All federal fund cuts for Harvard, and eight of the 10 federal research at the university, have happened since the professors left the campus.
About The Author
