The U.S. Department of Education released a new portal on Feb. 11 displaying data on foreign funding of American universities, including Tufts. The data, which includes disclosures of foreign contributions of $250,000 or more, reveals that Tufts receives more foreign funding from Saudi Arabia-based funders than from any other country by a wide margin.
Of the $216 million of foreign funding received by Tufts and reported to the Department of Education, $85 million came from Saudi Arabian-based funders, most of which came directly from the Saudi government. The relationship between Saudi Arabia and Tufts came under fire in 2018 and 2019 following Saudi Arabia’s assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but the university has accepted at least $11 million from Saudi funders since then.
Saudi Arabia’s dominance of Tufts’ foreign funding is largely explained by the country’s sponsorship of Saudi graduate students in the health sciences field. The sponsorship is done by the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission, which manages the education of Saudi students in the United States.
In the Education Department’s data release, one such contribution is labeled “Facilitate acceptance of Saudi dental graduated in post graduate programs.”
Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of media relations, asserted that no spots in the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine are reserved for Saudi students, interpreting the quote above as a reference to the facilitation of attendance through sponsorship rather than the facilitation of acceptance.
Tufts’ relationship with Saudi Arabia dates back to 1987, when the Tufts University School of Medicine helped build the country’s healthcare and education system. Following the Sept. 11 attacks, Tufts’ direct involvement in the Saudi health care system decreased, with the relationship shifting to SACM’s sponsorship of medical students.
In the late 2010s, many U.S. universities came under scrutiny for their acceptance of money from Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggi’s death in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. Since then, Saudi Arabia has continued to have a rocky human rights record. In 2026, watchdog organization Freedom House gave the country a 9/100 global freedom rating. That same report noted at least 356 executions on behalf of the government in 2025, often without due process and for nonlethal charges.
An investigation by the Daily in May 2019 examined Tufts’ relationship with Saudi Arabia. In that article, Collins said that the school was “intensifying [its] review of any potential future donations from Saudi sources in light of our continued concerns over oppression and human rights violations.”
The school still accepts a significant amount of money from the country, however. The university maintains that accepting these funds complies with its ethics.
“All awards, sponsored research, gifts and other sources of foreign support are carefully considered for ethical and compliance reasons,” Tom Malone, Tufts vice president of finance, wrote in a statement to the Daily.
In the 2019 article, Richard Dupee, former School of Medicine dean of international affairs, said that politics never came up in meetings with SACM and denied the notion that the program would result in Saudi influence on university political stances.
According to the Education Department’s portal, the next largest foreign funding sources for Tufts are from funders based in Canada, England, Switzerland and India, in that order. Besides financial support for students, many of the contributions released by the Education Department relate to sponsored research.
“Sponsored research benefits universities by providing essential resources — such as equipment, facilities and staffing — that support scholarly discovery and expand the institution’s research capabilities,” Malone said.
The Education Department’s release of data on foreign funding has coincided with recent scrutiny by Congress over money from “countries of concern” received by U.S. institutions and a push by Republican lawmakers to increase transparency surrounding foreign funding.
Recently, on March 12, the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing on foreign funding of universities. The hearing was used to argue for the DETERRENT Act, which would require universities to disclose all funds received from countries of concern, rather than only contributions of $250,000 or greater.
The only country of concern that appears in Tufts’ top 10 funders in the Education Department’s portal is China, which ranks 10th among Tufts’ foreign funders, with $4.1 million received. According to Malone, these funds were related to sponsored research and the school is not currently receiving any funding from China. The university explained that foreign research sponsorship is carefully evaluated.
“Our research security program provides functions to review grants and contracts to ensure partnerships align with our institution’s core values of integrity, collaboration and innovation, while also protecting the university community against improper foreign interference, conflicts of commitment and other research security concerns,” Collins said.
