The Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew S. Axelrod announced last week at the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) 2022 Annual Conference a new “Academic Outreach Initiative” by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) at the Commerce Department. The Initiative is aimed at assisting universities, particularly those engaged in proprietary research, in developing and implementing an Export Management Compliance Program (EMCP) to ensure compliance with the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

Assistant Secretary Axelrod announced the four primary efforts of the Initiative:

• Strategically prioritizing engagement with universities whose work has an elevated risk profile, such as those that are involved in research and development (R&D) for the U.S. Department of Defense, have ties to foreign universities that are on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, and/or are conducting research in sensitive technologies that are subject to the EAR (e.g., applied laboratories researching proprietary emerging technologies).
• Assigning “Outreach Agents” for prioritized institutions to serve as a point of contact and meet regularly with university counterparts (not less than once per quarter) to assist in preventing unauthorized exports.
• Providing background briefings on known national security risks associated with specific foreign entities that research universities may seek to partner with.
• Offering trainings on export controls in academia, including screening methods to identify whether potential partners have connections with parties on the Entity List of are otherwise a national security risk, advice on establishing and implementing tailored EMCPs and providing resources on compliance with the EAR that can be used by administrators, professors, staff and students.

During the Q&A session following his remarks, Assistant Secretary Axelrod emphasized that an institution’s partnership with BIS was voluntary and that the goal of the Initiative was for BIS to serve as a resource in navigating complex regulations and providing background information on third-party collaborators that may not be available to the institution. The Export Enforcement team is currently in the process of identifying prioritized institutions and anticipates outreach beginning later this year.

The full text of Assistant Secretary Axelrod’s remarks are available here: https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/about-bis/newsroom/3045-2022-06-28-remarks-as-axelrod-nacua-2022-conference/file, and the Export Enforcement Academic Outreach Initiative Policy Memo is available here: https://bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/enforcement/3040-academic-outreach-initiative-policy-memo-final/file.