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Purdue University was one of six universities chastised by the House Select Committee for accepting Chinese students who came from Chinese universities that, the committee said, had ties to that country’s military. (Photo/courtesy of Purdue University)

This story was originally published by Based in Lafayette

By Dave Bangert
Based in Lafayette
October 13, 2025

Months after Purdue and five other U.S. universities were labeled by a U.S. House Select Committee as “soft targets” for China for gathering sensitive research critical to national defense, a new congressional report contends that Purdue made a series of policy changes in recent months on travel, funding and visiting scholars connected with countries labeled as foreign adversaries.

The findings, in a report released in September by the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, called out universities for admitting students with ties to “defense-focused universities” in China “whose primary mission is to advance military research and development.”

The report blasted lax federal oversight on student visas across higher ed, specifically failed enforcement of an executive order from President Donald Trump’s first term that banned students from Chinese conducting military-linked research; questioned close collaborations between U.S. and Chinese universities and oversight of Chinese national students while working on U.S. campuses; and included accusations that U.S. taxpayers were helping fund research and projects that “risk directly advancing Beijing’s military and technological ambitions.”

In March, U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee, wrote in letters to Purdue President Mung Chiang and university presidents at Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and the universities of Illinois, Maryland and Southern California warning that “America’s student visa system has become a Trojan horse for Beijing, providing unrestricted access to our top research institutions and posing a direct threat to our national security.”

His demand was for an accounting of what sort of research students from China were doing, whether they were “disproportionately concentrated in high-tech fields” and where the campuses had “policies in place to prevent foreign nationals from working on projects tied to U.S. government grants” in defense and other sensitive areas.

Six months after responding to a U.S. House Select Committee’s demands, Purdue on Friday released its 47-page letter it sent in April, in response to a Based in Lafayette public records request.

The letter, dated April 1 and written by Purdue Provost Patrick Wolfe, compiled statistics on the number of students from China who were enrolled, their majors and their previous universities, sending them to Moolenaar.

The letter also addressed more than a dozen questions Moolenaar laid out for Chiang and his counterparts in mid-March.

Purdue’s response, delivered by Moolenaar’s April 1 deadline, did not include a list of names of 2,183 Chinese national students who were enrolled in the spring 2025 semester.

From Wolfe’s response:

“As the Committee assessed, there are increasing risks posed by (the People’s Republic of China’s) strategic efforts to exploit American universities for technological and military advancements. Moreover, we recognize, as you noted, that American campuses are soft targets for espionage and intellectual property theft.

“Purdue University always puts the interests of American citizens first, focusing on our country’s national security and the education of American students in essential fields.

“Of course, irrespective of their nationality or country of origin, we only ever enroll international students or employ non-U.S. persons who have secured fully vetted and approved visas through the United States Government.”

Purdue previously had acknowledged that it had responded by the House Select Committee’s deadline. But repeatedly, university officials said they would defer to Moolenaar and the U.S. House committee before releasing its letter or addressing any questions.

The timing for the response to BiL’s public records request, submitted in April, came a month after the congressional committee released its report.

Wolfe this weekend declined to comment further on the congressional report’s conclusions or Purdue’s responses.

Delays in reporting since March, though, raised questions about how far Purdue would go to expose students on campus at a time when federal scrutiny of student visas were in play during the spring.

The federal report chastised Purdue and the other five universities for accepting students from a set of Chinese universities the committee says directly feed that nation’s military.

“While international academic exchange has long been a pillar of U.S. higher education—bringing diverse perspectives, fostering global collaboration and advancing science — it must not come at the expense of national security,” the committee’s report read. “Welcoming foreign students strengthens America’s innovation ecosystem, but only when accompanied by clear, enforceable guardrails to mitigate exploitation by our adversaries. Nowhere is this more urgent than in the case of China. Without enhanced visa screening, institutional transparency, and technology protection measures, the United States risks training the next generation of engineers, scientists and weapons designers — not for America’s benefit, but for the advancement of the People’s Liberation Army.”

Part of the report focused on the number of Purdue faculty on sabbatical or doing research in China and visiting Chinese faculty doing work on Purdue’s campus. Wolfe’s April 1 response put that total at 22, with six on sabbatical in China and 16 visiting faculty in West Lafayette.

Wolfe’s April 1 response said that in those cases, “prior to engaging in international activities, Purdue reviews to ensure that the activity does not involve a malign foreign talent recruitment program; working with restricted parties; export-controlled information for which a license would be required.”

While the report said Purdue “has taken the prudent step of avoiding formal, institutional-level collaborations with China-based universities or research laboratories,” it took issue with visiting scholars “embedding in critical research departments across Purdue.”

The report, though, noted that internal communication at Purdue, obtained by the Select House Committee in September, indicated that the university had “proactively reviewed its policies regarding foreign students and research collaboration and has already implemented new safeguards.”

According to the House Select Committee’s report, Purdue’s new policies include:

• “A prohibition on foreign adversary funding, including visiting scholars from foreign adversary nations;
• “Clear guidelines pertaining to research security and export controls to safeguard information and technologies from exploitation;
• “Intellectual property protection, including prohibitions on transfers to foreign adversaries; and
• “Travel restrictions, including sabbaticals and other engagements with foreign adversaries.”

The report concluded: “This forward-leaning approach should serve as an example to other institutions of higher education, underscoring the need for universities to take proactive measures to protect their campuses from malign foreign influence and the exploitation of critical and emerging technology research by foreign adversaries.”

That internal memo with the policy changes was not included in full with the report and wasn’t immediately available from Purdue.

Purdue’s initial response to the House Select Committee

Moolenaar’s letter in March accused universities of being more interested in the flow of full-rate tuition than in national security, amid what the committee’s letter referred to as a Harvard study that indicated 75% of Chinese students come to U.S. university with the intent to return to China.

Much of Purdue’s initial April 1 letter addressed Moolenaar’s questions point by point.

• Purdue reported that of 2,183 Chinese national students, 783 were undergraduates, making up 1.8% of the overall enrollment; 256 were master’s or professional degree students; and 1,444 were doctoral graduate students, making up 20.5% of that classification at Purdue. Chinese national students made up 10.8% of the university’s total graduate student body.
• Of those, 1,736 previously attended a total of 425 institutions, all listed in the report.
• Asked to specify sources of tuition paid by those Chinese students, Purdue’s letter said the university did not know that.
• The letter said Chinese national students were enrolled in 155 academic degree programs at Purdue. It broke down a list of research initiatives Chinese student were part of, by college and department.
• Purdue reported that 28.7% of Chinese graduate students “reported effort of federally funded research projects” at some point in fall 2024. Purdue’s letter said the university “has established institutional policies and internal controls” regarding the involvement of foreign nationals in federally funded research, including when that involving the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and other federal agencies.
• Purdue said that Chinese national students had worked on federally funded research, “but only after clearing current vetting processes for any particular research project, and with monitoring mechanisms in place.”
• The House Select Committee asked whether any Chinese graduate students had “disclosed participation in China-backed recruitment and talent programs, government grants or corporate-backed funding initiatives.” Purdue said none had. “Additionally,” the university’s letter read, “Purdue has policies prohibiting engagements with restricted parties; therefore, any request for permission to engage in an activity that could result in a financial conflict of interest or an outside activity is denied by Purdue if the activity is with a restricted party.”
• Purdue’s letter said that of students who reported post-graduation plans, 3% from the 2023 graduating class returned to China, with the rest remaining in the United States.
• Asked whether Chinese nationals were “disproportionately concentrated in high-tech fields,” Purdue reported that Chinese graduate students were “overrepresented” in computer and information technology (with 39.6% compared to 10.8% of overall graduate student enrollment), computer science (35.2%), and electrical and computer engineering (24.2%).
• Asked whether faculty members maintain research ties with Chinese institutions or researchers, Purdue’s letter said that “in the broadest sense” – including “situation in which a faculty member has served on a grants review panel in a single instance” – 22 faculty members “have disclosed and received approvals of Reportable Outside Activities with Chinese institutions.” The letter reads: “Purdue has a policy prohibiting activities with institutions on restricted party lists, and we also monitor international activities through the use of open-source software to ensure that such ties do not constitute a Malign Foreign Talent Recruitment Program and are not with institutions or people on restricted party lists.”

Dave Bangert retired after 32 years of reporting and writing on just about everything at the Lafayette Journal & Courier. He started the Based in Lafayette reporting project in 2021. To learn more about subscribing to Based in Lafayette, click here.