Trump Ups Ante in Funding Fight With Harvard University

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump appeared intent to escalate his administration’s funding fight with Harvard University on Tuesday, suggesting the Ivy League school lose its tax exempt status.

Harvard, the United States’ richest school with an endowment of $53 billion, is just one of a number of top universities that have been in the government’s crosshairs since Trump returned to office in January.

Early on, the president accused the universities of failing to protect Jewish students after campuses across the country boiled over with protests against the war in Gaza and U.S. support for Israel last year.

Since then, the president has made repeated stabs reshaping how these universities operate by demanding that they change admissions, hiring and teaching practices, all with an eye toward fighting antisemitism on campus.

Columbia University, site of a series of occupation protests in between April and June last year, immediately agreed to a number of administration demands last month after the White House pulled $400 million in federal funding.

On Monday, however, Harvard adopted a different tack, becoming the first major university to reject demands from the administration, in the process accusing the White House of trying to “take over” the university.

That prompted an angry response from the president Tuesday morning.

“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?’” Trump posted on Truth Social. 

“Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” he added.

Later, during her regular Tuesday briefing with reporters, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt elaborated on the president’s thinking.

His position, she said, stems from “the basic principle that Jewish American students, or students of any faith, should not be illegally harassed and targeted on our nation’s college campuses.”

“Unfortunately, we saw just that kind of illegal discrimination take place on the campus of Harvard last year,” Leavitt continued. “There are countless examples to prove it, particularly the stunning confession by then-Harvard president Claudine Gay, who said that bullying and harassment depended on the context. 

“The president, at that time, made it clear to the American public that he was not going to tolerate illegal harassment and antisemitism taking place in violation of federal law,” she said.

When it comes to Harvard, specifically, Leavitt said, “all the president is saying is don’t break the law, and then you can have your federal funding.”

In a letter sent to Harvard President Alan Garber on Friday, the administration accused the university of failing to live up to the “intellectual and civil rights conditions” that justify federal investment.

“An investment is not an entitlement,” the letter said. “It depends on Harvard upholding federal civil rights laws, and it only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor, both of which are antithetical to ideological capture.”

The letter included a list of proposed changes at Harvard, including its taking steps to not admit international students who are “hostile to American values and institutions” and to report any foreign student to the federal government who commits a conduct violation.

The letter requested Harvard have a government-approved third party audit the student body, faculty, staff and leadership for “viewpoint diversity,” in order to ensure that each department, field or teaching unit is individually viewpoint diverse.

It goes on to request a government-approved third party also audit “those programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.”

These included, but were not limited to Harvard’s Divinity School, Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, Medical School, Religion and Public Life Program, FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic.

The administration also asked the final audit report include information “as to individual faculty members who discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students or incited students to violate Harvard’s rules” following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, and that the university, with the federal government, “determine appropriate sanctions” for those faculty members “within the bounds of academic freedom and the First Amendment.”

In rejecting these criteria, Garber said that while “some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”

“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,” he said.

Shortly after Garber sent the government his response, the Education Department’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced it was immediately freezing $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” the task force said in a statement.

“The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable. The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable. It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support,” it added. 

Harvard isn’t the only elite university feeling the heat from the White House.

The Trump administration has frozen dozens of research contracts at Cornell, Princeton and Northwestern universities for much the same reasons it has targeted Harvard. 

It also suspended $175 million in funding at the University of Pennsylvania because the school allowed a transgender athlete, Lia Thomas, to compete on its women’s swim team.

Thomas went on to win three individual swimming events in the women’s Ivy League championships in 2022.

The announcement of the funding suspension came a month after Trump signed an executive order called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which mandated cutting federal funding from educational institutions that allow transgender women and girls to compete in female sports.

If Harvard were to lose its tax exemption, as Trump has now suggested, it would cost the university millions of dollars each year.

According to a brief statement on the website of the office of its controller, “President and Fellows of Harvard College is exempt from federal income tax as an educational institution under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.

“As an educational institution, Harvard is also exempt from Massachusetts state income tax,” the statement added.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue