‘It’s what they deserve,’ president writes in brief social media post amid Ivy League school’s lawsuit against the administration after it froze $2.2 billion in funding
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Friday said he planned to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status, the latest salvo against the Ivy League school amid a larger crackdown on elite US universities.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, without specifying when he might take action.
Representatives for Harvard could not be immediately reached for comment on the president’s post.
Since taking office in January, Trump has targeted major US universities by freezing federal funding, launching investigations, revoking student visas and making other demands, saying higher education has been gripped by antisemitic, anti-American, Marxist and “radical left” ideologies.
Harvard has pushed back, suing the administration over the halted US research funding and other demands, and joining more than 200 university and college presidents in protesting Trump’s higher education policies.
The school filed a lawsuit against the university last week, which calls for a funding freeze and conditions imposed on federal grants to be declared unlawful, arguing the measures amount to political interference aimed at compromising the Ivy League institution’s independence.
Last week, Trump bashed Harvard as an “antisemitic, far left institution” that admits students “from all over the world that want to rip our country apart.”
That broadside came a day after he issued an executive order targeting higher education, upending how federal authorities decide which universities and colleges can access billions of dollars from certain grants and student loans.
The executive order seeks to clamp down on what Trump brands “unlawful discrimination,” that is, any measures that seek to promote the representation of “racial and ethnic minority individuals.”
The Trump administration claims protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept across US college campuses last year were rife with antisemitism.
Many US universities, including Harvard, cracked down on the protests over the allegations at the time, with the Cambridge-based institution placing 23 students on probation and denying degrees to 12 others, according to protest organizers.
But on Tuesday, Harvard
released its long-awaited internal report on campus antisemitism, depicting a hostile atmosphere toward Jews and Israelis before and after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
Harvard President Alan Garber said last week that Trump’s administration had launched “numerous investigations” into the university’s operations.
Trump’s claims about diversity tap into long-standing conservative complaints that US university campuses are too liberal, shutting out right-wing voices and favoring minorities.
In the case of Harvard, the White House is seeking unprecedented levels of government control over the inner workings of the country’s oldest and wealthiest university — and one of the most respected educational and research institutions in the world.
Harvard has rejected the government’s supervision demands, prompting the Trump administration to freeze $2.2 billion in funding.
In Wednesday’s executive order, Trump decreed that “American students and taxpayers deserve better, and my Administration will reform our dysfunctional accreditation system so that colleges and universities focus on delivering high-quality academic programs at a reasonable price.”
AP, Luke Tress and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
