A congressional committee asked the University of Maryland, College Park’s president for detailed information about Chinese students in a letter to the school’s president last week, prompting students and faculty to petition Darryll J. Pines not to comply with the letter.

Pines said Monday in a response to the petition’s signatories that the school’s administration would “do our very best to be responsive” to the 20-point request from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which is seeking a response by April 1. But Pines added that any response would be in compliance with the school’s policies and procedures, “as well as our commitment to first amendment rights and academic freedom.”

The university, in a statement, said that it “plans to respond to the letter in accordance with federal privacy law.”

The Republican-led committee’s letter to Pines seeks numerous details about Chinese students, such as how their tuition is being funded and what programs they participate in, citing concerns over national security.

The school’s Graduate Labor Union, which circulated the petition, said on social media that the letter was “an escalation of existing xenophobic policies” from the federal government during Donald Trump’s presidency and a “blatant attempt to attack higher education.”

The union said that the university submitting to the committee’s requests would set “a dangerous precedent that legitimizes the demonization of any demographic arbitrarily deemed as a threat.”

The union and multiple student groups condemned Pines’ response later Monday in a joint Instagram post.

The university president’s response offered “no actionable guarantee to protect Chinese researchers on campus,” said the groups, which included the university’s Asian American Student Union and Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines. They described the letter as a call from the Trump administration to “profile and gather information on” Chinese students.

A White House spokesperson referred questions to the committee, which was established in 2023 as Republicans took control of the House. The committee’s stated objective is to evaluate Beijing’s ruling party’s “economic, technological, and security progress and its competition” with the U.S.

The congressional committee also sent letters seeking similar information to five other universities last week, claiming that American universities are “increasingly used as conduits for foreign adversaries to illegally gain access to critical research and advanced technology.” It cites a report released last fall by the select committee and an education committee, which jointly determined that “hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. federal research funding over the last decade” had helped China achieve technological breakthroughs, including military applications.

The committee’s letter to Pines is signed by the committee’s chair, Republican Rep. John Moolenaar. In a statement, the Michigan congressman called the U.S. student visa system “a Trojan horse for Beijing” and claimed that the Communist Party had “established a well-documented, systematic pipeline to embed researchers” in American institutions, giving them access to sensitive technologies.

In addition to various statistics about the school’s Chinese student body, Moolenaar also requested the university to “list all university programs that include Chinese national participants” and how they are funded, and provide a “country-by-country breakdown of applicants, admittances, and enrollments at your university.”

It also asks if the university tracks foreign students’ “participation in research with military or dual-use applications” and if there are restrictions on Chinese students enrolling in “export-controlled coursework” like semiconductor engineering or quantum computing.

Asked about the letters by state media last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning urged the U.S. to “stop brandishing national security as a false pretext” and instead protect the “legitimate and lawful rights” of Chinese students studying there.

Chinese students make up a quarter of the international students in the U.S., and both countries have benefited from cooperation in student exchange, Mao said. Asked Monday about the letters, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy repeated Mao’s statement.

Days before the letters to universities were sent, a group of House Republicans introduced a measure to bar Chinese nationals from studying at U.S. universities altogether, citing similar security concerns.

The requests from the GOP-led panel come as the Trump administration sets out on key campaign promises of restricting U.S. immigration and reshaping foreign trade with tariffs on goods imported to the U.S.

Relations between the world’s two largest economies have become particularly strained due to the latter promise, with a back-and-forth of tariffs imposed by Washington and Beijing seemingly continuing into April. Relations between the two countries, China’s premier said Sunday, “have come to an important juncture.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article. Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.