House Republicans Zero In on Now-Defunct Training Program to Accuse Harvard Kennedy School of CCP Ties

A Republican-led House committee accused the Harvard Kennedy School of partnering with an organization linked to the Chinese Communist Party in a Wednesday letter to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76.

The letter is a product of an investigation launched in May by the House Select Committee on the CCP into Harvard’s alleged relationships with CCP-affiliated groups, one of a string of congressional probes into the University’s affairs.

Republicans said in May that the CCP investigation would address two main claims: that Harvard’s School of Public Health hosted members of a Chinese paramilitary group at events, and that Harvard faculty partnered with Chinese researchers on research with military applications.

But the Wednesday letter did not mention those allegations and instead shifted attention toward HKS, accusing the graduate program of training high-level Chinese government officials through a “formal partnership” with the Chinese Executive Leadership Academy Pudong.

“Under that partnership, the rising CCP elite who are being prepared for senior Communist Party leadership positions participate in training at Harvard in the United States,” Committee chair John R. Moolenaar (R-Mich.) wrote in the letter.

It was co-signed by House Committee on Education and the Workforce chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and House Republican Conference chair Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.).

The letter gave the University until next Friday to submit any documents that link Harvard to the CCP and provide a record of any money or benefits received from the CCP.

A Kennedy School spokesperson confirmed the University had received the letter but declined to comment on its contents.

Accusations that Harvard maintains improper foreign relationships have become a common refrain for the Trump administration as it campaigns to strip the University of its funding and standing. In a June proclamation banning international students at Harvard from entering the U.S., President Donald Trump emphasized the University’s ties to China and repeated the accusations leveled by the committee.

But Harvard’s dealings with the CCP were a focus of Congress long before President Trump took aim at the University. Last year, the Select Committee on the CCP investigated Harvard for inconsistent disciplinary action in an April 2024 anti-CCP protest. And the House has scrutinized the funding that Harvard receives from China dating back to 2020.

Notably, however, HKS — a school that enrolled 86 students from China last fall — had not featured prominently in Republican broadsides until Wednesday’s letter. In total, Harvard enrolls more than 1,200 Chinese international students.

In the letter, Moolenaar said whistleblowers revealed the alleged collaboration between HKS and CELAP, an school in Shanghai’s Pudong district that is supervised and funded by the Chinese government.

CELAP does not publicly advertise a relationship with Harvard, but did document a 2013 visit from Harvard students and HKS professor Steven Kelman.

And the executive vice president of CELAP, Feng Jun, is a graduate of a now-defunct HKS program for senior Chinese officials known as “China’s Leaders in Development.” He has called HKS a “model” for CELAP.

CELAP did not respond to a request for comment.

The China’s Leaders in Development program is a well-documented partnership that was established in 2001 with Tsinghua University in China and offered leadership training to senior Chinese government officials.

According to a source familiar with the partnership, all participants in the program were vetted by the U.S. State Department. They also regularly met with members of Congress and senior White House officials, including those who now occupy roles in the Trump administration.

HKS ended the partnership in 2016 because of concerns that the Chinese government had become more internally repressive and externally aggressive, the same source said.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at elise.spenner@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.