US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is pushing for an investigation into allegations that Harvard University violated federal sanctions amid a continued rift with the Donald Trump-led government. The US government had launched a multi-pronged attack against the oldest and wealthiest university in the country earlier this year — freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status. The revelation came even as approximately 12,000 alumni and 24 other universities threw legal support behind Harvard over efforts to freeze more than $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in contracts.
According to a New York Times report, Rubio is pushing to investigate whether Harvard violated sanctions by collaborating on a health insurance conference in China that may have included officials blacklisted by the US. He has reportedly signed off on a recommendation to the Treasury Department last month to open an investigation. A spokesperson told Reuters that the agency takes “any allegations of sanctions violations extremely seriously” without confirming if there was an investigation underway.
The event in question — known as the Training Course on Health Financing — had begun in 2019 as a joint venture between Harvard, the World Bank and the National Health Insurance Administration. The latter is an arm of the Chinese government that oversees the state-backed healthcare system. The event was promoted by the university and drew upward of 200 people in some years.
The call for sanctions pertains to the presence of officials from a Chinese state-run group called the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps at some of these events. According to the US government, the XPCC has been linked to systemic human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the region. The Treasury Department had imposed sanctions against the group in 2020.
Reportedly the university has also begun conducting an internal review about the involvement of the Chinese state-run group Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps at the conference.