By Kritika Agarwal
The House Education and Workforce Committee voted 20-14 along party lines on February 12 to approve a bill that AAU warned would threaten the United States’ position as the world’s leader in cutting-edge scientific research by making international research collaborations more difficult.
The DETERRENT (Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions) Act (H.R. 1048) was first introduced and passed the House in 2023, and then reintroduced again earlier this month by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA). It would amend Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which determines how universities report foreign gifts and contracts to the Department of Education.
The DETERRENT would significantly lower the threshold for reporting foreign gifts (from the current $250,000 to $50,000) for universities and research faculty and staff. It would also add new bureaucratic hurdles to research, requiring universities to obtain waivers from the Department of Education for any contract entered into with partners in a “country of concern,” according to federal definitions.
This latter requirement could greatly impede the ability of American universities to continue and enter into productive research collaborations with scholars from China and to continue student and cultural exchange programs with Chinese universities. This would be detrimental to our long-term national interests, since research collaborations and academic exchanges with China are crucial to advancing American scientific knowledge, promoting cultural understanding between the two nations, and safeguarding our economic and national security interests.
This is why AAU joined the American Council on Education and four other higher education associations in sending a letter to the House Education and Workforce Committee prior to their markup opposing the bill, especially its burdensome expansion of reporting requirements for universities and research faculty and staff.
“We appreciate and take seriously the continuing concerns being raised around research security and foreign malign influence at U.S. institutions of higher education,” the associations noted. However, they continued: “As currently proposed, the DETERRENT Act would add significant impediments to conducting critical research activities, duplicate existing interagency efforts, and put in place a problematic expansion of data collection by the U.S. Department of Education without ensuring these requirements address actual national security or foreign malign influence threats.”
The letter specifically asked the committee to strike sections 117a through 117d of the proposed bill and to encourage the Department of Education to carry out negotiated rulemaking on Section 117 to ensure it engages with the university stakeholder community.
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act currently requires institutions of higher education in the United States to report “any gifts received from and contracts with a foreign source that, alone or combined, are valued at $250,000 or more in a calendar year” to the Department of Education. Universities comply rigorously with this reporting obligation and have developed stringent criteria for determining whether to accept gifts and contracts from foreign entities.
The DETERRENT Act now heads to the House floor for a vote.
Kritika Agarwal is senior editorial officer at AAU.