Following Free Beacon Report, GOP Leaders Threaten Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status for Training ‘Paramilitary Organization’ Sanctioned Over Uyghur Genocide
20th May 2025
Three House committee chairs threatened Harvard University’s nonprofit status following a Washington Free Beacon report revealing that the Ivy League school repeatedly trained members of a Chinese “paramilitary organization” after the U.S. government sanctioned the group for its role in the Uyghur genocide.
Republican representatives Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), Tim Walberg (Mich.), and John Moolenaar (Mich.)—who chair House Republican Leadership, the Committee on Education and Workforce, and the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, respectively—sent a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber on Monday demanding comprehensive details about the university’s activities with the Chinese Communist Party.
Those activities include hosting and training members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), which the U.S. Department of the Treasury described as a “paramilitary organization … that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party” while announcing sanctions on the group in 2020. China-focused research group Strategy Risks first uncovered a 2023 training, while the Free Beacon uncovered a second that took place in 2024.