President Trump threatened Harvard University’s tax-exempt status on Tuesday after the school rebuffed the administration’s demands ostensibly aimed at purging “woke” ideology from America’s college campuses. The changes, Harvard officials said, required severe restrictions, including to freedom of expression, that they could not accept.
Mr. Trump’s threat escalated the feud between the Trump administration and Harvard, the nation’s richest as well as oldest university.
“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?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
It’s the latest turn in a fight between Mr. Trump and academia more broadly, in which the Trump administration has been threatening to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from various colleges and universities over diversity hiring practices and the tolerance of anti-Israel protests on campuses that sometimes included antisemitic behavior.
Last week, Harvard was sent a letter by the Trump administration demanding reforms and routine progress reports on how they were being implemented, in order to continue to “maintain” the financial relationship with the government. Harvard rejected the demand, and the Trump administration instituted a funding freeze of more than $2 billion.
Harvard is uniquely positioned to withstand such a change, with an endowment totaling more than $50 billion. By contrast, Columbia University, which has a far smaller endowment, settled with the administration when it was pressed to make changes to its policies and programs.
Officials at Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anemona Hartocollis contributed reporting.
