US President Donald Trump threatened to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status and said the university should apologize, a day after it rejected what it called unlawful demands to overhaul academic programs or lose federal grants.
Trump said in a social media post he was mulling whether to seek to end Harvard’s tax-exempt status if it continued pushing what he called “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?'”
He did not say how he would do this. Under the US tax code, most universities are exempt from federal income tax because they are deemed to be “operated exclusively” for public educational purposes.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump wanted to see Harvard apologize for what she called “antisemitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish American students.”
She accused Harvard and other schools of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by recipients of federal funding based on race or national origin.
Under Title VI, federal funds can be terminated only after a lengthy investigation and hearings as well as a 30-day notice to Congress, which has not happened at Columbia or Harvard.
Harvard President Alan Garber in a letter on Monday said demands the Trump administration made of the Massachusetts university, including an audit to ensure the “viewpoint diversity” of its students and faculty and an end to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, were unprecedented “assertions of power, unmoored from the law” that violated constitutional free speech and the Civil Rights Act.
Like Columbia, he said Harvard had worked to fight antisemitism and other prejudice on its campus while preserving academic freedoms and the right to protest.
