Trump Threatens Harvard's Tax-Exempt Status

On Tuesday, Trump administration officials pulled over $2 billion in federal funding from Harvard University after the university announced that it would not comply with a convoluted, contradictory list of demands from the government.

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority,” reads a Monday response letter from Harvard President Alan M. Garber. “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

However, the loss of federal funds doesn’t appear to be enough for the Trump administration. According to The New York Times, the IRS is now seeking to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status. 

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” wrote President Donald Trump on Truth Social on Tuesday. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Harvard, like most other colleges and universities, is able to avoid taxes under a provision of the tax code that provides exemptions to nonprofit organizations whose purposes are “charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.” Educational institutions have occasionally had their tax-exempt status revoked for policies that explicitly violated U.S. antidiscrimination law. Most famously, Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian college, lost its tax-exempt status in 1976 after the school refused to revoke a ban on interracial dating. 

However, the basis of Harvard’s potential loss of tax-exemption status is less clear. It seems likely that the IRS will target the school on allegations of antisemitic or racially discriminatory policies, but so far no specifics have been formally released. 

“We’ll see what IRS comes back with relative to Harvard,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon told CNN this week. “I certainly think, you know, in elitist schools, especially that have these incredibly large endowments, you know, we should probably have a look into that.”

Revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status would be yet another escalation in Trump’s war against colleges and universities that refuse to bend to his demands. While the federal government is well within its rights to enforce existing antidiscrimination law at colleges and universities, Trump’s actions toward schools like Harvard and Columbia are looking more and more like viewpoint discrimination.

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