Trump reiterates call to pull Harvard's tax-exempt status
President Trump issued another warning that Harvard University would lose its tax-exempt status, stemming largely from the school’s failure to address anti-Semitic discrimination.
On Friday, the president posted to Truth Social that, 'We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!'
President Trump recently made another announcement warning Harvard University that it would lose its tax-exempt status, stemming largely from the school’s failure to address anti-Semitic discrimination.
On Friday, the president posted to Truth Social that, “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!”
Trump previously said in another post that he strongly disapproves of Harvard’s hiring practices, which overwhelmingly favor leftist professors.
“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders,’” Trump wrote last month. “Look just to the recent past at their plagiarizing President, who so greatly embarrassed Harvard before the United States Congress.”
A Harvard spokesperson claimed that revoking the school’s tax-exempt status would be illegal, emphasizing that such an “unprecedented” action could severely harm Harvard’s ability to educate its students and cut into its financial aid budget.
“Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission,” the spokesperson told Fox News. “It would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation.”
The federal government has previously revoked colleges’ tax-exempt status, most notably when the Supreme Court upheld a decision against Bob Jones University for its policies on interracial dating in 1983.
Trump’s statements, which also characterized Harvard professors as “Leftist dopes,” have been met by significant criticism from groups such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
“Weaponizing the IRS and the tax code to attack the president’s ideological opponents is a dangerous precedent that inevitably will be used by future administrations to penalize any nonprofit whose speech falls out of favor with those in power,” the organization posted to X on Friday.
As previously noted by Campus Reform, Harvard has already lost part of its federal funding over ongoing anti-Semitism concerns. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cancelled $2.7 million in grants to the university in April due to the “anti-American, pro-Hamas ideology poisoning its campus and classrooms.”
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem emphasized that Harvard is losing its academic prestige, stating in her announcement of the grant revocation that, “Harvard’s position as a top institution of higher learning is a distant memory. America demands more from universities entrusted with taxpayer dollars.”
Campus Reform has reached out to Harvard University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.