Charles Lipson: The Think Tank Implicated by Biden’s Classified Documents

Joe Biden has been the Typhoid Mary to classified documents, spreading them everywhere he goes. They continue to appear in batches after batches, all over the place except at a Wilmington Starbucks. The president has not said much about the situation, other than to reassure us. “people know I take classified documents seriously.” Since then, the defense has seen a slight shift in punctuation. “People know I take classified documents. Seriously.” He does. They are his everywhere.

Recent classified documents were discovered at Penn-Biden Center, an international policy think tank in Washington, DC, established by Biden in partnership and the University of Pennsylvania. These documents raise further questions. Why were Biden’s lawyers searching there in the first place? We still don’t know. More broadly, how was this center funded, and what were Joe Biden’s connections to the university? Again, we don’t know. Similar questions are raised about the University of Delaware’s Biden Center, where Biden stored more than 1,800 boxes.

These questions are still unanswered and the White House continues to block anyone from asking. The universities are as silent as a cemetery.

The Penn-Biden Center, and our politicized Universities

Important as these questions are, they are not the only ones surrounding Penn’s Washington-based Center. Two other issues have been overlooked, but point to deeper problems in our politicized universities.

First, the Penn-Biden Center is essentially an adjunct to one political party. It is located at a major research university. That’s wrong. It is wrong for any university to embrace this kind of partisanship. It violates the university’s fundamental duty As an institution To maintain its scholarly neutrality. Professors and students can take any political stance they want, as individuals or in groups. But the university itself (and its departments) should avoid them unless they bear directly on the university’s educational responsibilities.

This institutional neutrality is vital to the university’s purpose. This allows students and faculty to think for themselves, and not be influenced by those who have cut their salaries or denied them tuition scholarships.

This responsibility was abandoned by the University of Pennsylvania when it sponsored a Washington centre that was tightly tied to one party’s leaders. That mistake is part of Penn’s larger failure to maintain an open academic environment, where free speech and robust discourse are encouraged. In fact, the most authoritative monitor of free speech on campus — the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) — has ranked Penn the second-worst university in the country for open discourse. Columbia is worse. Ben Franklin weeps.

Penn’s failure to maintain institutional neutrality is closely linked to a second problem. The Penn-Biden Center was purpose-built to give Biden’s inner circle a snug resting place as they waited for Joe to run again. The former vice president’s position there was richly paid and required almost no work. (He claimed to be a professor. He wasn’t.) Chicago is a city that knows all about no-show work. They were handed to political allies by the old Democratic machine, who then kept them in a safe place. “Streets and Sanitation,” and didn’t call them professors.

The Penn-Biden Center’s problems go beyond Joe Biden lending a name and getting a simple sinecure. Foreign and domestic donors had a secret way to gain favor with potential presidential candidates, bolster their pockets, and keep it all private behind closed doors. For wealthy foreign donors like those who are connected to the Chinese Communist Party, this secrecy proved especially helpful as they were able to infiltrate themselves at many cash-starved universities.

Penn has made it clear that its Biden Centre did not receive any funding from donors, except for a few thousand dollars. According to them, it was funded entirely by the university. What we don’t know is what happened behind the scenes, whether money was transferred from one university account to another to mask its origins. For example, we know that significant donations were received from the University by well-connected Chinese citizens after the Center was founded. What we don’t know is who these donors were and what they got for their largesse. Penn won’t say.

These questions arise as no one would give $30 million to a university, as the Chinese entities did. without attaching some strings or seeking some benefits. No one writes multi-million-dollar checks or cuts checks. “Oh, just use it as you see fit. We have no interest in that.” It never happens. Donors are interested in knowing how their money will go, and almost always expect something in return. Under oath, it is perfectly reasonable to inquire about this at the University of Pennsylvania.

These issues extend beyond one university and the politically connected centers. Many universities have had Chinese donors. China is now an enemy, not a friend, so Congress must know the identities of these donors, their connections to the Chinese Communist Party, what universities they are involved with, and what they get in return. These questions might start with the Penn-Biden Center, but they shouldn’t stop there.

These documents were mishandled raises more questions

Nor should the questions end with Biden’s mishandling of documents at the Center. These questions should be part a larger inquiry into Joe Biden’s knowledge or worse, how he improperly benefited from the many lucrative contacts he had with foreign entities. Some of these were corrupt. Others were in hostile countries. This has been a topic of little media interest until now.

These extensive contacts are why Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop is so important. They are why it was so pernicious — and such a flagrant abuse of journalistic standards — to suppress that story before the 2020 election, as mainstream outlets and social media did. This is not about the tragic story of a drug-addled, feckless son who traded on his name. That’s unsavory but not necessarily illegal. What are the key questions? “the Big Guy” What he knew, what he did, if any, to help; and whether or not he profited from his official positions.

The Penn-Biden Center is probably safe from these grifts by Hunter and Joe’s brothers. But the Center may not be safe from Joe Biden’s own schemes to leverage his political prominence for cushy funding.

Joe did that at Penn-Biden Center. However, he did so in collaboration with University of Pennsylvania. Penn-Biden Center was eager to work with a powerful politician. The university’s partisan role here is part of a larger story — the troubling saga of American universities that have lost their way. They have become the avatars of one political ideology and strangle opposing views, lose sight of their fundamental mission and sink into an educational and institutional abyss.

Charles Lipson is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security was founded. He can be reached by email at [email protected]

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