A federal court has blocked the Trump administration\u2019s proposal to publicly disclose the names of foreign donors who give gifts to American universities, including Penn.<\/p>\n
United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted<\/a> the Association of American Universities\u2019 motion last week, barring the Department of Education from publicizing the names of institutional donors for 28 days. The association filed its complaint<\/a> against the federal government on Oct. 1 over its decision to make donor names public after six years of confidentiality.<\/p>\n The decision comes amid an ongoing Education Department investigation<\/a> into Penn\u2019s foreign funding records over \u201cinaccurate\u201d and \u201cincomplete\u201d disclosures.\u00a0<\/p>\n In response to a request for comment, an Education Department spokesperson wrote that the department does not comment on investigations. In January, a spokesperson wrote that there had been \u201cno updates\u201d regarding the investigation, which was opened in May 2025. \u00a0<\/p>\n Penn is one of 69 member universities in AAU, which also includes the rest of the Ivy League, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The association advocates for \u201cthe interests of research universities in the United States\u201d and seeks to \u201cstrengthen the partnership between our federal government and research universities.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Sign Up<\/a><\/p>\n A request for comment was left with a University spokesperson and a spokesperson for Penn\u2019s International Student and Scholar Services.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAAU has shown a likelihood of success on its claim that the Publication Decision is arbitrary and capricious,\u201d Chutkan wrote in the opinion, adding that the plaintiffs \u201care also likely to show that they will \u2018suffer irreparable harm unless preliminary relief is granted.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Under the order, the federal government cannot release donor names for at least the next 28 days, though the court can extend the injunction at its discretion.<\/p>\n The association called<\/a> the department\u2019s decision to publicize donor names \u201ca broken promise\u201d in an Oct. 2 press release.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPublication would expose donors to harassment, reputational harm, and, in some cases, real danger in their home countries,\u201d the release read. \u201cIt would signal to every donor and every institution that a federal agency\u2019s written commitment cannot be trusted.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the complaint, the Trump administration began requesting that universities also report names and addresses of their donors in 2020. At the time, the complaint read, the Education Department \u201cexpressly and repeatedly promised that the government would not publicly disclose covered donors\u2019 names.\u201d<\/p>\n The plaintiffs argued that they were not legally required to comply with the demands under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act but did so anyway \u201cin the spirit of transparency and partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n They added that promises of privacy have shaped their communications with prospective donors, writing that \u201cmany gifts over the last six years have been made in reliance on that promise of confidentiality.\u201d<\/p>\n Penn ranks fifth<\/a> among American higher education institutions in the amount of foreign funding received, according to data the Education Department published earlier this year. The University has garnered $2.8 billion in foreign gifts between 1986 and Dec. 16, 2025.<\/p>\n The federal government has until Oct. 13 to file any motion in opposition to the injunction, Chutkan wrote. If it does, the Association of American Universities will have until Oct. 20 to submit a response.\u00a0<\/p>\n Senior reporter Lavanya Mani covers legal affairs and can be reached at mani@thedp.com<\/a>. At Penn, she studies comparative literature. Follow her on X @LavanyaMani_<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal court has blocked the Trump administration\u2019s proposal to publicly disclose the names of foreign donors who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-299924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}