Judicial Watch Sues Education Department Over Univ. of Michigan’s China Ties

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education seeking records on the University of Michigan’s connections to China, including related communications with the U.S. Department of Justice (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Education (No. 1:25-cv-03895)).

 Judicial Watch sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Education Department failed to provide records in response to a June 4, 2025, FOIA request for:

• All records of funding received by the University of Michigan from the government of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, any Chinese national or associated entity, including records created or received by the department pursuant to section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 [foreign gift and contract reporting].

• All records of communication between any official of the Department of Education and any official of the Department of Justice or any component thereof regarding the University of Michigan’s Molecular Plant-Microbe Interaction Laboratory and Working Group, employee, or student affiliated with the laboratory or working group.

On June 5 Judicial Watch narrowed the scope of the request for information on the lab to include the following officials: 

• Secretary McMahon
• Chief of Staff Oglesby
• White House Liaison Warzoha
• International Affairs Office Director Hong
• General Counsel Wheeler
• The Deputy General Counsel for Postsecondary Education
• Office of Postsecondary Education Assistant Secretary Bergeron
• International and Foreign Language Education Senior Director Gibbs

In January 2025, the university announced it was ending its partnership with a prominent Chinese university, a few months after five Chinese students in a joint program were charged with lying to federal investigators regarding suspicious activities outside a remote military site.

In June 2025, two Chinese nationals — Yunqing Jian, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Michigan’s Molecular Plant‑Microbe Interaction Laboratory, and Zunyong Liu, her partner, — were charged with conspiring to smuggle a fungus considered to be a potential agroterrorism agent into the U.S. Jian later pleaded guilty to smuggling and making false statements and was sentenced to time served. Liu was stopped at Detroit Metro Airport in 2024 with concealed fungal samples and later deported. Separately, four other Chinese nationals have been charged with smuggling biological materials.

“We are helping to keep an eye on tax-supported universities with connections to hostile foreign governments,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The American public deserves a full accounting.”

In January 2025 Judicial Watch sued the Education Department on behalf of the Zachor Legal Institute for records concerning Qatar’s funding and operations of five U.S. universities, including the University of Michigan. Qatar had given or contracted nearly $6 billion to American universities since 2007, according to a February 2024 report. The money was said to have “enabled Qatar to have outsized influence in American politics and academia, efforts [that] have mainstreamed anti-Israel propaganda and silenced criticism about Doha’s longstanding ties to Hamas, the Iranian regime, and other terror groups.” 

Judicial Watch and the Zachor previously had spent more than five years successfully fighting the Qatar Foundation in Texas courts for information about the funding of Texas A&M. The records that were produced showed that over $522 million was given by Qatar to the state university from January 1, 2013, to May 22, 2018, including more than $485 million from the Qatar Foundation.  In addition, because of Judicial Watch’s court victory, Texas A&M produced contracts that suggest Texas A&M provided an assignment of sensitive intellectual property to the Qatar Foundation.

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