The University of Michigan is sick. Call it the China Syndrome. Its best hope for a cure comes from Washington, by way of President Donald Trump.
A letter this week from the U.S. Department of Education’s legal office showed that the feds have the same concerns about Michigan’s flagship university that citizens do. Specifically, that one of America’s top public schools and China, one of America’s top adversaries, are too closely linked.
When citizens get mad at U-M, they might send your kid to Hillsdale instead, or write a column.
When the feds get mad, billions of dollars in research funding are threatened. U-M is in the “FO” part of the story, as it were.
Of the $2 billion U-M spent on research in 2024, $1.17 billion came from the feds, per the letter’s author, Kevin Slupe, senior counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. That’s about 58%.
But another big chunk of its research funding comes from foreign sources. Since 2021, U-M has taken in $375 million in foreign research funding. And 20% of it was mislabeled as non-governmental, Slupe wrote.
This creates a time of choosing for U-M.
The choice is between compliance with the feds, who represent the bulk of its research funding, and close ties with the Chinese government.
It’s between the state-school mission it was built for and the globalization it has embraced.
Which way, Michigan man?
U-M’s mission statement points to the problem and offers an easy fix. It reads:
“The mission of the University of Michigan is to serve the people of Michigan and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.”
The problem and the solution are the same three words: “And the world.”
“And the world” is why out-of-staters outnumber Michiganders at a school created to serve the people of Michigan. “And the world” is the heart of the problem. U-M is so busy serving everybody that it forgot to treat the people of Michigan as special.
Thrust into this controversy is Interim President Domenico Grasso, who Slupe wrote his letter to.
Chinagate is a fight U-M can’t win—just ask Harvard. And it’s a fight an interim university president cannot join.
If ever there was a time to pressure U-M, it’s now. If ever there was a man to pressure, it’s Grasso, who is not responsible for what came before and won’t be asked to map the future.
This gives him the leeway to actually fix the problem. And puts him under too much spotlight to resist the fix.
It could all be so simple. U-M could improve its stature in Lansing and Washington by rededicating itself to its core mission: to serve the people of Michigan. Admit the best of the best, train them, then send them into the world. Show everybody what the Michigan Difference looks like.
That’s the U-M we grew up with. What exists now in Ann Arbor is a fallback school for Ivy League rejects from the East Coast. It’s a finishing school for the sons of China. And it’s an active threat to the state, rather than the blessing it used to be. The three China scandals we know about are all different: election integrity, agriculture, and military.
How many threats to national security does China need to pose, and how much does the school need to lose, to change course? Why is this fix coming from Washington and not from Ann Arbor?
U-M is not a global citizen. It’s a Michigander, just like you and me.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
