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WASHINGTON, D.C. – This Week, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast wrote a letter to Boston University President Melissa Gilliam raising concerns over the “Impact Counter,” a dashboard promoted by the university that makes false and misleading claims about the impacts of restructuring at the U.S. Agency for International Development.  

In his letter, Chairman Mast exposes a series of falsehoods conveyed by the dashboard and used to spread dangerous hysteria about deaths caused by the USAID restructuring.  

“I am deeply concerned that Boston University is serving as a platform for the weaponization of academia, where federally funded professors are spreading disinformation about the ongoing reorganization of USAID and its consequences,” Chairman Mast wrote. “Brooke Nichols, an Associate Professor at BU, is at the heart of this dangerous hysteria through her creation of the ‘Impact Counter,’ a dashboard of numbers that claim the restructuring of USAID has killed hundreds of thousands of people.” 

As Chairman Mast notes, the dashboard has been used as ammunition to attack President Trump as his administration carries out a foreign policy agenda that puts America first and promotes U.S. interests abroad. 

“Unfortunately, hidden behind Dr. Nichols’ claim is an erroneous set of assumptions based on inaccurate information,” Chairman Mast wrote. “This platform has become no better than a Russian bot farm or CCP propaganda. Boston University is creating a breeding ground for far-left activists to exploit academia for political gain which undermines the legitimacy of these institutions.” 

Read the full letter here.