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Walberg, Moolenaar, Stefanik Unveil New Harvard-CCP Ties

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 31, 2025
Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI), Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) sent a letter to Harvard University identifying alarming new evidence of Harvard's partnership with a Chinese Communist Party school, including a formal training program for Party members tagged for future leadership positions.

The committees learned from multiple whistleblowers that Harvard partners with a school controlled by the Central Organization Department of the Central Committee on the CCP, also known as the CCP Organization Department.

The CCP Organization Department is directly responsible for furthering Xi Jinping's authoritarian regime.

"The CCP Organization Department is one of the most powerful bodies within the Communist Party; it is responsible for the regimented training program centered on 'Xi Jinping Thought' provided to the Party elites and controls the placement of CCP members in key leadership positions," the letter writes.

The committees revealed that the Harvard Kennedy School partners with the CCP Organization Department's Chinese Executive Leadership Academy Pudong (CELAP) to train the rising CCP elite–who are being primed for senior Communist Party leadership–at Harvard.

As the letter finds, "In 2016, a high-ranking member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences stated that Chinese 'party and government cadres' participate in 'education and training' run by the CCP Organization Department. The Chinese government 'sends some cadres abroad' to 'the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.'"

The letter demands a direct response from Harvard, including:

  • All documents related to collaboration between Harvard and any PRC or CCP-related entities
  • A list of all monetary or non-monetary benefits received by PRC or CCP-related entities

This evidence isn't the first of Harvard's close ties with the CCP. In fact, Harvard's relationship has lead to its moniker as a "party school" by CCP officials.

The committees are investigating Harvard's deeply troubling ties to the CCP that threaten U.S. national security interests.

In May, the committees sent a letter demanding transparency and accountability, exposing troubling partnerships that raised serious national security and ethical concerns, including:

  • Harvard’s repeated training of members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC)–a U.S.-sanctioned paramilitary group that plays a central role in the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide of Uyghur Muslims
  • Research partnerships funded by the Department of Defense with Chinese military-linked universities, including Tsinghua, Zhejiang, and Huazhong Universities
  • Collaborations with Iranian-government-funded researchers, including projects financed by the Iranian National Science Foundation
  • Organ transplantation research involving PRC-based collaborators, amid mounting evidence of the CCP’s forced organ harvesting practice

The committees are committed to transparency and is continuing to investigate these troubling ties.

Read the most recent letter here.

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