House Proposes Banning Federal Funds for Researchers with ‘Hostile’ Foreign Ties

Higher education associations are calling on Congress to abandon a research security bill that would prohibit awarding federal funds to researchers affiliated with a “hostile foreign entity.” Researchers would remain barred from receiving federal grant money for five years after terminating any disqualifying connections. Any such connections that were terminated no later than 90 days after the passage of the bill would not incur that penalty.

The SAFE Research Act uses “enormously broad definitions” that, in practice, would require all higher education institutions to terminate engagements with many international universities and researchers to obtain federal funding, the American Association of Universities and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities wrote in a letter to the House and Senate armed services committees last week.

The House passed the bill, authored by House CCP Committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-MI), as an amendment to its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026. The bill also includes a provision that would prevent the Department of Defense from providing funds to higher education institutions that partner with any of the “hostile foreign entities” that appear on a variety of “entity lists” maintained by several agencies. The bill would allow agency heads to grant waivers to individuals or institutions on a case-by-case basis.

The bill would also require researchers applying for grants to disclose a wide variety of connections to “foreign adversary countries” — specifically North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran — over the past five years. Applicants would have to disclose collaborations with researchers affiliated with institutions in those countries, money or gifts from individuals in those countries, and any travel to those countries.

As the CCP committee chair, Moolenaar has led investigations into DOD-funded collaborations with Chinese partners, “joint institutes” with ties to the Chinese military, and federal funding going to Chinese graduate students. He cites each report as part of his justification for introducing the SAFE Research Act.

“American universities should never be a pipeline for the Chinese Communist Party’s military ambitions,” Moolenaar said. “These collaborations empower China’s military and exploit research paid for by American taxpayers.”

In their letter, AAU and APLU state: “While we are well aware of the need to prohibit certain types of collaborations to ensure our national security, Americans do benefit from many other important international research collaborations in areas such as global health and fundamental knowledge creation — including those with China — more than they do by completely severing all scientific and academic ties with talented researchers.”

The Asian American Scholar Forum also sent a letter to the armed services committees saying that overly broad policies could lead to arbitrary or biased enforcement. “Those that would be most impacted would be Asian American scientists, scholars, and researchers, particularly of Chinese descent who have been scapegoated time and time again as ‘perpetual foreigners’ in the country that they call home,” AASF Executive Director Gisela Perez Kusakawa said in a statement.

House Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) also criticized the SAFE Research Act in a floor statement, asking Moolenaar to review existing legislation and update the amendment to align with provisions in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and previous NDAAs. For instance, prohibiting a “teaching relationship” with foreign entities directly contradicts exemptions made in the CHIPS Act, she said.

Regarding disclosure requirements, the letter from AAU and APLU states that existing requirements from previously enacted policies “are working,” and that the amendment duplicates and sometimes conflicts with these existing requirements, placing additional burdens on both research institutions and agencies. DOD’s current project-by-project risk analysis allows flexibility for international collaborations that “shed light on the critical technology areas where other nations — including China — are already leapfrogging the United States,” the letter states.

The letter also states that agencies are currently experiencing significant reductions in force, “to include many of the very agency staff with direct responsibility for effectuating research security policy.”

The House and Senate are now working to reconcile their passed versions of the full NDAA. The Senate version, which does not include the SAFE Research Act, passed with bipartisan support. The House version passed along partisan lines.

In their letter, AAU and APLU praised the committees’ bipartisan collaboration on science and research security in the past, but argue that the SAFE Research Act was “not marked up or carefully debated at all.”