The American Association of University Professors publicly challenged the Education Department’s use of Palantir technology on a federal portal that tracks foreign gifts and contracts to colleges, the AAUP said at a news conference this month. The department’s foreign-funding portal displayed Palantir branding briefly, prompting concerns about a surveillance contractor with ties to defense and immigration agencies handling sensitive higher-ed data. Education Department officials said Palantir worked as a subcontractor on the portal for a vendor named Monkton and later removed the Palantir branding. The AAUP demanded transparency on the contract’s scope, cost and purpose, warning that Palantir’s involvement risks the surveillance of academic institutions and could chill campus research, faculty exchange, and external funding relationships. Trustees and compliance officers should review institutional reporting obligations under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act and ask vendor and federal partners about data access, protections, and redaction procedures. The episode underscores growing tensions between federal enforcement efforts, contractor politics, and campus concerns about academic freedom and donor privacy.