Education Department investigates University of Texas ties to Wuhan lab
The Department of Education revealed
that it is scrutinizing
the University of Texas’s financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as part of its broadening investigation of foreign funding by China and other countries on U.S. campuses.
Reed Rubinstein,
the Education Department’s acting general counsel,
sent a seven-page letter to University of Texas Chancellor James Milliken on April 24, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, with the government saying
it did not have confidence that the school had reported all of its foreign contracts, including with the Wuhan lab, as required by Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965.
The letter said
the University of Texas’s Medical Branch is responsible for the operation of the Galveston National Laboratory,which, in turn, has
“substantial contractual relations” with a maximum biocontainment laboratory, or MCL, in Wuhan, China.
That lab is owned by the Chinese government’s Chinese Academy of Sciences.
State Department cables in 2018
warned about biosecurity and management problems at the lab.
The U.S. intelligence community
is currently investigating whether the novel coronavirus originated in a wet market or through an accidental release from the lab.