According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration is pushing the Internal Revenue Service to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status.
The Post reported that three sources informed the outlet that President Donald Trump’s administration had asked the IRS to make the move, although there is no confirmation that it has done so. WaPo also reported that its sources claimed Andrew De Mello, the IRS’s acting chief counsel, was asked by the Treasury Department to take the action. Sources also claimed this is part of a feud with Ivy League schools that the Trump administration views as “woke.”
“I think they’re going to go after a whole bunch of them,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) said. “I’m not sure why we need to be funding people who aggressively refuse to give up a variety of values and structures that most Americans don’t agree with.”
On Tuesday. President Trump posted on Truth Social, “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!”
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields stated: “Any forthcoming actions by the IRS will be conducted independently of the president, and investigations into any institution’s violations of its tax status were initiated prior to the president’s TRUTH.”
In January 2024, Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-MO), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, suggested that the responses of Harvard, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT to the antisemitism on their campuses might justify revoking their tax-exempt status. The college’s actions “raise several questions, including whether your institutions are fulfilling their educational purposes as required to receive 501c3 tax-exempt status …”
On Monday, the Trump administration’s Department of Education announced it would freeze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract value to Harvard University after the school said it would not comply with the Trump administration’s demand that the university claimed would “invade university freedoms.”
Last Friday, the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services sent a letter to Harvard in which they stated, “By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin …” adding that the same attitude must prevail in admissions policies. The correspondence also declared that by the same date, the university must “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism.”
The university “shall commission an external party … to audit the student body, faculty and leadership for viewpoint diversity” by August 2025, the letter continued, in order to ensure that the leftist perspective that dominates the university should be contrasted with other viewpoints.
Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University, responded with a statement in which he said, “We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement,” contending, “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights” and claiming the administration’s demands violated “Harvard’s First Amendment rights … threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”
