‘Universities should never partner with regimes carrying out an ongoing genocide’: Uyghur Human Rights Project leader
Human rights advocates are calling upon lawmakers and federal authorities to open an official investigation into Harvard University and its connections to Chinese entities linked to genocide.
Two experts on human rights abuses in China told The College Fix there needs to be greater accountability and oversight of international partnerships between American universities and the communist country.
Their calls come after a May letter from the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party to Harvard President Alan Garber asked the Ivy League school for more details about its dealings with China. Lawmakers brought up concerns about “national security” and “genocide.”
According to the letter, the Ivy League school has been complicit in training and providing services to members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps since as early as 2019.
The XPCC is a CCP paramilitary organization that is the “primary” facilitator of the ethnic genocide of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Province, according to the letter. The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic minority, predominantly Muslim, that primarily live in northwestern China.
According to a U.S. Department of Labor report: “Since 2016, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has subjected Uyghurs and members of other predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to genocide, state-imposed forced labor, and crimes against humanity.”
‘More interested in keeping the flow of students and contributions’
Louisa Greve, the director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, recently spoke with The Fix on the nature of partnerships between American universities and China.
“Continuing to cooperate with entities carrying out severe abuses is to give tacit approval,” Greve said. “This includes not only the police forces such as the Ministry of Justice (operating prisons, using torture, conducting unfair trials, sentencing without trial, etc), the Ministry of Public Security (police), and the XPCC paramilitary state-within-a-state.”
Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and expert on China’s human rights abuses, told The Fix there are competing interests within these partnerships.
“University administrators at places like Harvard and Stanford are more interested in keeping the flow of students and contributions from China coming than they are in exposing the massive human rights violations committed by the CCP against the Chinese people,” Mosher said.
“This has been true since the beginning of the U.S.-China scholarly exchange programs,” he told The Fix in a recent email.
China’s abuses, according to Mosher’s research, include forced and coerced abortions and sterilizations, torture, and forced labor.
In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio asked the Treasury Department to launch an investigation into Harvard’s connections to China and whether they violated federal sanctions restrictions on China, the New York Times reported.
Responding, Greve told The Fix: “Universities should never partner with regimes carrying out an ongoing genocide. At a bare minimum, universities like Harvard need to know they are not exempt from enforcement of Magnitsky sanctions imposed on the XPCC, in place since July 2020.”
Under the 2016 Magnitsky law, the U.S. government can implement sanctions against specific foreign entities responsible for human rights abuses.
Report links Harvard, China to ‘illicit organ harvesting’
One of the primary concerns raised by federal lawmakers is an ongoing partnership between Harvard’s public health school and the communist country.
In 2020, the Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health launched its “Harvard China Health Partnership” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the demand for advanced global medical collaboration.
The university website states that the partnership aims to improve medical research and public health across China for global implications.
Harvard’s public health school has partnered with the Chinese National Health Security Administration to host the “Flagship Course on Effective and Sustainable Health Care Financing” since 2019.
Members of the XPCC have attended the course regularly, including the past two years, according to a 2023 news release and 2024 news release by the Chinese National Health Security Administration, referenced in the U.S. House committee’s letter.
Harvard has continued its involvement with the XPCC as recently as 2024 despite being “complicit in the Uyghur genocide” and included on the U.S. Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals List, according to a statement by the Department of Homeland Security.
The Fix contacted the Harvard media relations office three times via email within the past three weeks but did not receive a response. The Fix asked about the university’s response to sanctions claims, national security concerns, and the implications of academic and institutional partnerships between the U.S. and China.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congressional Executive Committee on China and the House Committee also have raised concerns about the use of medical research partnerships between Harvard and Chinese organizations.
One involves “illicit organ harvesting targeting ethnic and religious minorities,” according to the committee’s letter to Harvard.
The committee identified seven medical research articles published between 2022 and 2024 through collaborations between Harvard and Chinese researchers on human organ harvesting, a documented human rights abuse by the Chinese government against Uyghurs and other minority groups.
Greve of the Uyghur Human Rights Project said her organization “strongly endorses the action taken by the CECC and Select Committee to investigate and seek responses from universities” like Harvard.
“When teaching hospitals, universities and scientific journals don’t vet the people they are working with or publishing, they are helping advance these people’s careers regardless of deep ethical abuses, and basically normalizing cooperation with a genocidal apparatus,” she told The Fix.
Greve said that vetting, compliance with Magnitsky sanctions, and avoidance of all benefits for perpetrators of genocide are crucial in future foreign partnerships with American academic institutions.
Mosher also said he wants to see more oversight, telling The Fix, “American institutions should adopt a policy of strict reciprocity in terms of exchanges of students and scholars.”
Lawmakers raise concerns about U.S. security
Investigations into the involvement of the XPCC in Harvard’s health conference have revealed additional points of concern.
The recent House Select Committee report alleges Harvard researchers “used funding from the Department of Defense to partner with China-based academics on research with potential military applications.”
The researchers also partnered with “individuals linked to China’s defense academic and industrial base on research that could advance China’s military modernization,” according to the report.
Additionally, the report alleged Harvard was responsible for another violation by collaborating with China-based academics on four research projects over the past five years funded by the Iranian National Science Foundation, Tehran’s scientific development apparatus.
If federal investigations validate the claims of sanctions violations, Harvard could face legal action, including large fines or limited access to federal support.
MORE: Harvard professor convicted for hiding ties to China gets new job in China
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A tear appears between the Chinese flag and the United States flag; R Rice/Shutterstock