Citing national security concerns, the U.S. Department of Defense has requested that Emory University conduct a “research security audit” and present its findings by next week or risk losing federal funding.
The department said in a recent media release it had directed 30 schools to initiate “comprehensive reviews of their academic, financial and research collaborations with foreign entities of concern.” It did not list the schools or explain why they had been selected.
Emory confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it is among the 30 schools, saying it had received and was reviewing the department’s request.
The request and its Aug. 31 deadline have put pressure on the selected universities, according to Sarah Spreitzer, vice president of government relations for the American Council on Education.
While audits are normal for research funded by the U.S. Defense Department, Spreitzer said the concern for schools “is the very short turnaround … and perhaps the implication that these institutions have already been found guilty of some sort of wrongdoing.”
According to the release, schools must comply with the directive to “maintain eligibility for future federal research funding.” It is unclear if all federal research funding is at risk or strictly Defense Department funding.
School data shows Emory received less than $10 million per year in federal awards from the department between fiscal year 2021 and 2024. In fiscal year 2025, it received nearly $27 million.
According to a department official, the audits were ordered to identify vulnerabilities, enforce compliance and strengthen protections across all department-funded research.
The official declined to provide the letter sent to Emory or share why the private Atlanta university was selected.
Both the official and the media release cite Section 1286, a piece of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The section, according to a department website, lists “foreign entities and talent programs confirmed to be engaging in activities that threaten U.S. national security interests.”
That list was most recently updated late last month. Among the entities added was Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, which currently has a partnership with Emory’s law school. Through the program, applicants apply through the Shanghai Jiao Tong University-KoGuan Law School. They spend their fall semester at KoGuan Law before enrolling full time at Emory Law. Students were not admitted to the program last academic year, according to the Emory website.
Emory declined to share the formal notice it received from the department, but according to the release, notifications sent to universities addressed “active institutional ties” to Section 1286 entities, “as well as organizations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes.”
Sponsored by the Chinese government, it could previously be found on many college campuses where they taught Mandarin Chinese to students. Critics accused them of spreading Chinese propaganda, and a 2019 bipartisan congressional report urged schools to sever ties with the programs. In 2020, Emory announced it would end its partnership with Confucius for unspecified reasons.
The department release includes few specifics about what exactly the university audits should include. While it mentions that the schools should terminate “problematic partnerships,” it does not say how and who will determine partnerships to be problematic.
The Association of American Universities, comprised of Emory and 70 other leading research universities, told the AJC it is “still assessing the implications of the audit and working to better understand what the Pentagon hopes to gain from it.”
“We are also speaking with our member institutions that received the audit request to understand their ability to provide the information within the short timeframe provided,” the AAU said.
Spreitzer — reiterating that the Section 1286 list was only updated a month ago — thinks the department will have to demonstrate why a specific partnership is of concern, even if the entity is on the list.
“I would think that they would address the risk mitigation by saying to these 30 institutions, ‘Look, you have this sensitive funding. We’re concerned about this partnership. You need to end that partnership,’” said Spreitzer.
In a joint statement, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors said the directive was a form of “funding-based coercion.”
“By threatening to pull vital federal research funding without disclosing the standards used to target these institutions, and without providing any public evidence of actual wrongdoing, the government may be bypassing due process,” they wrote.
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