\n<\/p>\n
The department says Palantir was involved in a portal tracking universities’ foreign gifts and contracts.<\/p>\n
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is publicly expressing concern about the Education Department working with Palantir, a controversial artificial intelligence and data analysis company that serves the U.S. military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. <\/p>\n
The AAUP says it learned of the partnership when FedScoop <\/em>reported that it noticed a message referencing Palantir on the website foreignfundinghighered.gov Dec. 4. An hour later, the website showed \u201ca login page with the Palantir logo,\u201d and, a couple of hours after that, \u201cthe Palantir logo was replaced with an Education Department logo,\u201d the outlet wrote.<\/p>\n Foreignfundinghighered.gov tracks foreign gifts and contracts data for higher ed institutions. If a foreign source provides a college or university more than $250,000 in a year, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires the institution to report the payment to the federal government. <\/p>\n In an email to Inside Higher Ed, <\/em>the Education Department described Palantir\u2019s involvement in the past tense. It said Palantir was involved with the foreign funding portal as a subcontractor for Monkton, a company that has long handled privacy and data issues for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. <\/p>\n \u201cAfter soliciting feedback from institutions of higher education, the Trump Administration has upgraded the portal to make it easier for colleges and universities to report their foreign gifts and contracts as required,\u201d Julie Hartman, the Education Department\u2019s press secretary for legal affairs, said in a statement.<\/p>\n The AAUP held a news conference Wednesday raising concern about Palantir\u2019s past work and about critical statements that Palantir leaders Alex Karp and Peter Thiel had made about higher ed. <\/p>\n \u201cWe want transparency,\u201d AAUP president Todd Wolfson told reporters. \u201cWe want to know what Palantir is doing on this contract and we want to know how much they stand to make.\u201d He said it \u201cseems to be yet another front aimed at surveilling and criminalizing our colleges and universities,\u201d and could indicate a \u201cshift toward treating higher education not as a public good, but as a security threat to be monitored.\u201d <\/p>\n The department didn\u2019t tell Inside Higher Ed<\/em> how much Palantir is being paid. Hartman said \u201cuniversities\u2019 clear disclosure and public transparency requirements have been in statute for decades,\u201d adding that the AAUP\u2019s \u201cbaseless assertion that the portal is a \u2018politicized punitive action\u2019 demonstrates their utter disregard for the rule of law.\u201d <\/p>\n She said, \u201cthe Trump Administration is ending the secrecy surrounding foreign dollars and influence on American campuses.\u201d Palantir spokespeople didn\u2019t return Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u2019s requests for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The department says Palantir was involved in a portal tracking universities’ foreign gifts and contracts. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is publicly expressing concern about the Education Department working with Palantir, a controversial artificial intelligence and data analysis company that serves the U.S. military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The AAUP says it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[14273,4222,200,7729,4804,514],"class_list":{"0":"post-38370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-aaup","9":"tag-alarm","10":"tag-department","11":"tag-palantirs","12":"tag-raises","13":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}