By ANNIE MA, JOCELYN GECKER and COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has escalated its ongoing battle with Harvard, threatening to revoke the university’s ability to host international students as the president called for withdrawing Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
The Department of Homeland Security ordered Harvard late Tuesday to turn over “detailed records” of its foreign student visa holders’ “illegal and violent activities” by April 30. International students make up 27% of the campus.
The department also said it was canceling two grants to the school totaling $2.7 million.
The moves deepen the crackdown on Harvard, which on Monday became the first university to openly defy the administration’s demands related to activism on campus, antisemitism and diversity. The federal government has already frozen more than $2 billion in grants and contracts to the Ivy League institution.
Trump suggested Tuesday on social media that Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status “if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”
Tax exemptions enable universities to receive large donations from major funders who want to decrease their tax burdens, which was instrumental in helping Harvard amass the nation’s largest university endowment at $53 billion.
The hold on federal money for research at Harvard marked the seventh time the administration has taken such a step at one of the nation’s most elite colleges. The government is attempting to force compliance with Trump’s political agenda at schools he accuses of pushing “woke” policies and allowing antisemitism to fester.
In a letter to Harvard on Friday, Trump’s administration called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university, plus changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded that the university audit views of diversity on campus and stop recognizing some student clubs.
Harvard President Alan Garber said Monday that the university would not bend to the government’s demands. Later that day, the White House announced the freeze of more than $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in contracts.
In a statement issued Thursday, the university said the latest threats follow “on the heels of our statement that Harvard will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
The school sticks by its stance and “will continue to comply with the law and expect the Administration to do the same.”
Any federal action taken against a Harvard-affiliated individual should “be based on clear evidence, follow established legal procedures and respect the constitutional rights afforded to all individuals,” the Thursday statement added.
Conservative strategist Christopher Rufo said the government should respond to Harvard’s defiance by cutting all federal money and stripping nonprofit status at Harvard and other Ivies that defy federal orders. Rufo urged the government to use the same tools it used during the Civil Rights Movement to force desegregation.
“Trump needs to follow through on his threat to defund one of the Ivy League universities,” Rufo said on social media Tuesday. “Cut the funding and watch the university implode.”
Rufo said Harvard has discriminated against white and Asian American students, citing events such as graduation celebrations specific to certain ethnic groups, along with a 2021 theater performance exclusively “for Black-identifying audience members.”
Tax experts say removing Harvard’s tax exemption would open the door for Trump or any future president to punish political enemies.
Nonprofit status is contingent on an organization following IRS rules governing lobbying, political campaign activity and annual reporting obligations, among other requirements.
While “it’s easy for a 501(c)(3) organization to maintain its tax exempt status,” according to IRS publications, it “can be just as easy to lose it.”
Larry Summers, former Harvard president, decried the threat to remove Harvard’s status.
“Any self-respecting Treasury Secretary would resign rather have the Department be complicit in the weaponization of the IRS against a political adversary of the President,” he said on social media. “Harvard will endure, and it is far, far from perfect, but if this directive is not withdrawn, the Administration will have taken another substantial step away from the rule of law and democracy.”
For the Trump administration, Harvard presents the first major hurdle in its attempt to force change at universities that Republicans say have become hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism.
Trump’s campaign started at Columbia University, which initially agreed to several demands from the Trump administration but took a more emboldened tone after Harvard’s defiance. Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said in a campus message Monday that some of the demands “are not subject to negotiation” and that she read of Harvard’s rejection with “great interest.”
Trump has targeted schools accused of tolerating antisemitism amid a wave of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses. Some of the government’s demands touch directly on that activism, calling on Harvard to impose tougher discipline on protesters and to screen international students for those who are “hostile to the American values.”
Associated Press Writer Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
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