MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The battle between the Trump administration and Harvard University has moved to another front.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Yeah. The president threatened yesterday to revoke the school's tax-exempt status a day after cutting over $2 billion in federal funding and grants. Harvard's president had refused to implement the government's demands, which include overseeing academic departments and limiting student and faculty power.
MARTIN: NPR's Elissa Nadworny is with us now to tell us more. Good morning, Elissa.
ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So, you know, this isn't the first university the Trump administration has attacked, but I understand that the president took to social media to complain about Harvard specifically.
NADWORNY: Yeah. The latest move in this standoff, which has about $9 billion in federal grants for Harvard hanging in the balance, it happened on Trump's truth social platform with the president writing, quote, "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." And the background is, of course, on Friday, the administration sent Harvard a list of demands. Then on Monday, Harvard's president responded, rejecting them, saying they were illegal in an attempt to dictate, quote, "what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue."
MARTIN: I understand that there are already legal challenges to this.
NADWORNY: Yes. A lawsuit filed late last week by Harvard's faculty, along with the American Association of University Professors, is challenging this administration demands tied with withholding funding.
MARTIN: Could you just say more about President Trump's threats to remove Harvard's tax-exempt status?
NADWORNY: What are the administrators saying about this? Well, in my conversations with college leaders, many have said they were deeply worried about the administration moving beyond cutting research grants, and Trump's comments confirm those fears. Here's Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, which represents hundreds of colleges.
TED MITCHELL: The catalog of horrors is a thick one, and there are plenty of things that the administration can seek to do that would throw institutions off kilter, and tax-exempt status is certainly one of them.
NADWORNY: Nearly all colleges and universities are tax-exempt organizations. They're given nonprofit status, along with charities, religious institutions, and some political organizations, and that's allowed some elite institutions to amass huge endowments. Harvard is the largest at more than $50 billion.
MARTIN: So I was wondering, though, if President Trump actually has the authority to take away that status.
NADWORNY: Well, Republicans have long sought to curb those tax exemptions, and while Trump doesn't necessarily have the total authority to revoke a college's tax status, he can use the Internal Revenue Service to do it in rare circumstances. There's also a bill in Congress that would give the president and the Treasury Secretary greater control over this.
MARTIN: Is there a precedent for what the administration's trying to do here?
NADWORNY: So one example is Bob Jones University, which had an interracial dating and marriage ban, and the IRS ruled that those discriminatory policies were not charitable. That went all the way to the Supreme Court in the early 1980s. The college eventually dropped the ban and regained their tax status about two decades later.
MARTIN: And say more about why the Trump administration is doing this.
NADWORNY: The White House has continued to maintain that they are rooting out antisemitism on campus. But going after colleges, which the administration deems left-leaning or too liberal, has long been a goal of Trump. Here is Trump speaking at an event in Florida in 2023.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: After 50 years of leftist domination of the universities, I will take bold action to reclaim our colleges from the communist left.
NADWORNY: And, Michel, in the last month, the administration has canceled about $11 billion in federal grants at a handful of elite colleges, and President Trump doesn't appear to be backing down anytime soon.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Elissa Nadworny. Elissa, thank you.
NADWORNY: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
