A federal judge blocked the Education Department on Thursday from releasing a list of foreign donors to Harvard, Columbia and other top US universities — ruling that the disclosure of the confidential information could “constitute irreparable harm.”
DC US District Judge Tanya Chutkan slapped the temporary restraining order on the Trump administration as it was seeking to publish a list of all foreign donors who have given up to $5.2 billion to the universities since 2020.
So-called non-natural person entities accounted for the vast majority of the $5.2 billion, officials noted, rather than individual donors.
“This would be a foreign government; this could be a foreign military; this could be a foreign business, could be any of those things,” an Education Department official said of the list, or “an enterprise connected to a university, that’s connected to Chinese intelligence or the PLA [People’s Liberation Army].”
“Here, Defendants threaten to imminently publish the names of donors who have hitherto remained anonymous for every internet user to see in posterity,” wrote Chutkan in the five-page order.
“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,” added Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
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