President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will be revoking Harvard University’s tax-exempt status, a significant escalation in the administration’s ongoing campaign against the Ivy League’s crown jewel.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Trump did not offer specifics on the plan for removing Harvard’s tax exemption. Harvard is a nonprofit institution because of its educational mission, granting it access to certain tax benefits and deductions. Its endowment is $53.2 billion, the largest of any university, thanks to the generosity of its private donors. Harvard used its enormous endowment to provide over $749 million worth of financial aid in fiscal year 2024 in addition to other community and university projects.
“The government has long exempted universities from taxes in order to support their educational mission. The tax exemption means that more of every dollar can go toward scholarships for students, lifesaving and life-enhancing medical research, and technological advancements that drive economic growth. There is no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status,” a Harvard spokesperson said in a statement.
“Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission. It would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation. The unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America.”
Trump’s announcement follows the administration’s move to freeze $2 billion in federal funding to Harvard after the university refused its demands. Harvard is suing the Trump administration to fight the loss of federal funds, arguing the government is illegally attempting to micromanage the university.
Liberals have rallied around Harvard because of its resistance to the Trump administration’s demands as the federal government attempts to use its funding to pressure universities into adopting reforms. Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Warren (Mass.), Markey (Mass.), and Wyden (Ore.) have asked the IRS’s internal watchdog to investigate whether Trump unlawfully pressured the agency into removing Harvard’s tax exemption.
The federal government’s demands for Harvard include merit-based hiring and admissions, increased viewpoint diversity in admissions and hiring, appropriately disciplining campus agitators, improved screening of international students, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The Trump administration already launched a review of Harvard’s $9 billion of federal funding because of the school’s failure to address campus antisemitism. Harvard’s antisemitism task force released a report earlier this week detailing persistent antisemitism among anti-Israel activists, including Holocaust erasure and shunning Israeli students.
Harvard has pointed to the school’s reforms over the past 15 months to address campus antisemitism following Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, 2023. The Massachusetts university has improved its accountability and disciplinary procedures while bolstering initiatives meant to root out hate and foster ideological discipline.
Like many elite universities, Harvard had an anti-Israel encampment on campus last year protesting U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. Many of the anti-Israel demonstrations have featured calls to destroy Israel paired with anti-American viewpoints. Last year, former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned over her failure to address antisemitism on campus and a string of investigations into plagiarism Gay committed throughout her academic career.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration launched investigations into Harvard and Harvard Law Review after an explosive Washington Free Beacon report chronicling extensive alleged racial discrimination in the membership selection and editorial process at the prestigious law journal. Harvard Law School has said the law journal is a legally independent, student-run organization.
It is one of many universities currently under investigation for alleged civil rights violations tied to campus antisemitism or racially discriminatory DEI programs. Conservatives have long sought to combat the entrenched progressive bias in taxpayer funded institutions of higher education at the undergraduate and graduate levels.